Just One More
by PlasticPencils
Summary: Seven was different. He was a mystery that raked more questions than answers. He disproved every theory thrown at him. He baffled every thought associated with him. He stopped all research in its tracks. A level seven being like him couldn't exist...but he did.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

She never actually considered him a ghost. But once she and her husband had upgraded, so to speak, their lab, she could calculate so much more. He was different from other ghosts. A clear observation of this was seen as he never haunted anything, anyplace, or anyone. She now had about ten different ghost specimens, but for now he could only be categorized as a glob of ectoplasm with full mental capacity and an oddly stable matrix.

Other ghosts' matrix were stable, but not nearly as much as his. Other ghosts had a more dominating nature, sometimes going two ways between obsessive and aggressive. He was neither, until he had to be in the reflexive self-defense state of mind. Other ghosts wouldn't care about humans. It was unclear whether he did or didn't. Other ghosts thought of their hauntings as the marking of their territory. She didn't know whether he was doing the same thing by pushing his kind away from this city, thus defending his turf, or by attempting heroism in the light of its citizens.

He was different. Very, very different. As a registered level seven being, he was more than capable of annihilating everything he saw, so long as it wasn't coated with or consisted of reenforced anti-ectoplasmic liquid, which would harden drastically to serve as a barrier against his kind. Or in this case...

She looked up from her computer and the countless notes, theories, and recorded observations scatter around it.

...a containment unit.

This ghost here was elusive, so much that he was considered a rarity. By a fortunate stroke of luck they had managed to stun and capture him. He was no prize, but a level seven like him could be extremely useful in her studies. She could fashion new and even improved anti-ghost materials. Since there were so many ghosts in Amity Park, he could easily be key to finding their main weaknesses, something that no one had ever known before.

But he was awfully cocky for a prisoner at her mercy. His way of interaction, or rather, communication, was different from other ghosts' in the fact that being here almost seemed natural to him, as if he had been penned up and locked inside an inescapable glass unit a hundred times. He talked casually, like he was talking to a friend. He brought up conversations that tended to slide fluidly from one topic to the next. It never caused her to stray too far from her work, but occasionally she would bite the line and fall into one of his pointless chatter sessions. Sometimes it felt like he was talking on the phone, which was technically the same since there was an intercom built into a rounded corner of his unit, but everything he said was said naturally. It was like he wasn't even thinking about it, he just...said it. Whatever was on his mind, he talked about. At east until the intercom was deactivated.

He acted like a human teenager when she cut it off like that. He looked so annoyed and sometimes even shouted something to her. The way he kept gesturing to her and then the intercom and then to her again made it perfectly clear that he was irritated by what she had done and was now angrily demanding that she turn it back on. It was exactly like a teenager's reaction to being grounded from the phone. That look in their eyes, that frustration in their systems, the way they would yell things out and act like it was the end of the world... It was written all over him.

And it was enough to confirm that he was personifying himself more than any other ghost she had seen. He not only looked like a teenage boy, but spoke and acted like one as well. He even seemed to have hormonal fluctuations, but she knew the idea was a little farfetched to have a hint of truth to it.

The level seven, or just "seven", as she sometimes referred to him by, stopped picking at the edge of his white glove and looked at her with thoughtful eyes.

"I suppose you don't have something better to do than sit there and stare at me?" he remarked, a lopsided smile forming on his face.

"I have no need to justify my actions toward you, ghost," she said defensively, slightly embarrassed that she had in fact been absently staring at him.

He rolled his eyes and sighed. "I have a name, you know. If you could say it just once, that'd be great."

"Why?"

"Well for one, it means you acknowledge me as something other than a guinea pig-"

"Which you are less than," she interrupted.

He rolled his eyes again in a very irritated manner. "Right. Okay, something other than whatever is less than me."

Her turn to reveal some arrogance, no matter how childish it may be for a scientist of her rank. "There _is_ nothing lower than you. You ghosts are lucky you even exist."

He frowned. "Harsh." Sarcasm, another difference between the seven and other ghosts. There were ghosts who looked like teenagers, but they hardly acted like them, let alone spoke like them. "So lemme ask you something. You say we're lucky to exist, but you see us as so low on the food chain here that-"

"You aren't even on the food chain. Another thing that lowers your status. You are nothing more than lesser beings formed from ectoplasm and postmortem consciousness."

The seven looked up for a moment, his eyebrows furrowed in thought.

"Meaning...?" He gestured for her to complete the sentence.

"Meaning you and the rest of your kind are nothing above a mockery of what was once before you."

Another pause, this one lasting longer than anything she had heard today.

"Please say my name," he said. "It sets me aside from all those other ghosts. I'm not like them and you know it. Doesn't that make me something else? Doesn't that earn me a name, other than 'ghost' or 'seven'? I would really appreciate it. It doesn't have to be my full name, my last one is fine. I'm just asking you to say my name. It's not that hard, just a simple request."

"Why should I bend to you?" she retorted. "You're only different personality-wise, save for a few minor physical properties."

"Why is it so hard to say my name? I'm not asking you to go rob a bank. I get experimented on practically every day, can't I ask just one little thing from you?"

She narrowed her eyes and glared at seven for a short time before turning back to her work. There were plenty of numbers involved, and she couldn't let a mere ghost distract her from a lifetime of work and efforts, soon to be met with rapid progress and raw information. Experiments applied to seven had been useful so far. However, he wasn't just the blob of ectoplasm he should be. His body wasn't made entirely of ectoplasm, unlike every other ghost she had looked at. Though his physical traits were those perfectly balanced in a typical ghost, he had other traits that stumped her and forced her to halt certain aspects of her research. In fact, he had put down half her "foolproof" and "surefire" theories. Seven would have to be separated into an entirely new class.

It was impossible to do that, though, because he still had too many traits belonging to a normal ghost. Basically, he was different, yet not different. That was why half her theories had been false. Years of work and dedication were proving to be lies, nothing but faulty glints of pride that were supposed to be impeccable. But now seven had breached them without even trying. In turn, it made her question everything else she thought she knew.

Right now the only thing she knew for sure was that seven had unique properties that she had never before seen in other ghosts. According to her findings that simply wasn't possible! He was too ghost to be considered different, but was too different to be considered ghost!

And what's more, he kept speaking to her as though he was alive, even though he clearly was not. He always said something about living and dying, both of which were impossible for him. Parts of him even looked alive. He had a heartbeat, he needed to breathe, he needed to eat. He needed what was not necessary to sustain himself. If he wasn't fed his weight dropped. If he didn't breathe he would pass out. She never attempted to stop his heart, but she could tell he needed it beat so he could, as he would phrase it, "live".

All these were nothing to normal ghosts, yet seven had fully functioning organs. Because he ate and drank, his liver and kidneys had to be working. Actually, everything had to be working. Not a single part of him was shut down, because he in himself was functioning just as a human would.

She gasped. Everything in him was functioning...which would explain why he had adolescent mood swings! Hormones _were_ being produced inside him, which kept everything in him in check, including the involuntary organs such as his heart and stomach. So then... She sighed. So then it was possible for a ghost to have and even produce hormones...meaning yet another theory had vanished, proven faulty _again_.

She glanced at seven, who had gone back to picking at his glove. It was frustrating to know that all her work was being wasted, but by disproving one theory he had created the truth. He was more useful than she first thought...

"Glub...gluuuub..."

She turned from her computer again, just to see what he was doing this time. He had his nose gently touching the side of the glass perpendicular to her, his reflection showing as he smiled and held his hands, palms backward, over his ears. A fish. He was making a fish face. His eyes were crossed, giving him a comical look.

"Why are you doing that?" she asked, not much curiosity in her voice.

He smiled at his reflection. "I feel like I'm in a fish tank, so I figured, why not act like a fish? Burble...gluburble...bluuuug...glub..."

He turned his body so it was parallel to the ground and tapped his heels together in a way that made it look like he had fins. It was more evidence of his strange persona. Other ghosts would sit still until aggravated. Seven chose to actually _do_ something to pass time. What he did was usually silly and childish, but he didn't have much else to do.

"Well can you do something else? It's a little distracting," she said.

His pursed lips grew into a wide, toothy grin as he turned to look at her, eyes still crossed and hands still acting as gills. "Glub, glub!"

She reached for a small lever beside her desk and pulled it down. The intercom deactivated and his shenanigans were stopped, only to be replaced by inaudible yelling and irate body language. Eventually he would move to the far side of the unit and sulk, usually for about fifteen minutes before accepting what happened and going about his business, silently or not. She assumed that he was getting too lonely, and needed something to comfort him. That something had become his own voice. He talked to himself all the time, whenever he felt the urge to say something. He normally did that when she wouldn't talk back to him. He used his voice as a kind of distraction, another method to pass time as well as something to keep him company.

It struck her at that moment, yet another difference between seven and any other ghost. He yearned for human contact. That had to be the reason he kept starting up all kinds of conversations. That was probably the underlying reason that he wanted her to call him by his name. He just wanted to be noticed, to know he wasn't alone.

But... She shook her head and tried to focus on her new findings about the wonders of dead, yet at the same time living, organs working as a human's inside him. ...But he was still just a ghost.

Anyway, back to true research-

There was a short tapping sound on the glass and when she turned to look, he was floating in midair writhing. At first she worried that something might be wrong, but when he stopped to tap the glass again and resume writhing, after which the process repeated itself several more times, she realized that he was still acting like a fish when someone tapped the glass.

_Anyway_, back to true research, why would something already dead, already lifeless, need dead-living organs? The other ghosts had organs, but none of them breathed or ate or had a heartbeat. In fact, it could take hours for one of them to blink, if they did at all. This suggested that the tear film on their eyes had evaporated and couldn't be formed again due to lack of functioning tear ducts. They had to manually blink, whereas a human, or anything living for that matter, did not.

Her eyes gradually moved back to seven. He was physically different on so many new levels... She watched as his he blinked steadily and frequently, whenever his eyes moved. Any human's eyes moved that same way, displayed that same unbearable urge to blink for the protection and moisturization of their eyes. His eyes had a very evident tear film, further proof of working tear ducts. She had never seen him cry, but knowing that his eyes had that film over them proved to her that she didn't need to see him cry to know he had fully functioning tear glands.

Due to the presence of hormones, it was very clear that it wasn't just the organs that were working. To be able to produce hormones meant every gland in him was working properly, otherwise he would be suffering severely from whatever hormone he lacked. He wasn't suffering at all. He was _playing_ in a _cage_. If he was suffering then he was the world's best actor.

No! She wanted to slap herself. No, he could never be compared to the living in such a fashion as jobs or careers. She still looked at him, staring as she watched every movement. He was talking to himself again, having already dropped the fish act. Now he was hovering cross-legged, with his body slouched over and his head resting on one hand. The perfect image of a bored teenager, she noted. He didn't know she was watching; he seemed to be much too caught up in the conversation with himself. Just one more oddity to add to seven's list... All this was coming naturally to him. He wasn't forcing himself to look more like a bored teenager than a ghost, it was just happening. And the worst part about this, the part that would throw away yet another theory concerning a ghost's ability to force the image of humanity on themselves, was that his actions made him seem more human than the other ghosts. This was what teenagers looked like when they got so bored they didn't know what to do, and he acted like it was the most natural thing in the world.

And maybe to him, it was.

However, no matter how many theories he marked as true or false, he could never change one fact: he was a ghost. He was ectoplasm that somehow managed to stabilize itself, yet should never have existed, never have been able to form the image of a humanoid. At least the other ghosts had certain properties that explained why they were here today. Seven's properties explained almost nothing. The internal functions... Those were the most baffling to her. How did this happen? How did he come to be when he should be far too unstable to keep himself together? How did he form moving organs, exact replicas of a human's organs that functioned in the exact same _way_ as a human's? Had he done it consciously over time or was it an accident, so to speak, during his creation? Perhaps some malefactor had occurred and resulted in the anomaly that was seven? It might sound cruel, but he was a mistake, a reject of life.

Maybe he was involved with the black arts when he died...? Perhaps he was a necromancer or something of the sort...? It could explain a few things about him. An accident during his creation seemed ludicrous, but that, too, was a possibility. However, both ideas only led her to another question: how did he come to be? How was he created? Was he even created, even real? Well yes, at least that much was true. But what about every other question she couldn't answer? As soon as she discovered one little, tiny, _miniscule_ thing about seven, ten new questions popped up. Her mind was yelling at her to give it up because right now, she had nothing to explain him. All she could say about him was that he was different. She would have to make up anything beyond that if she were trying to tell someone about her recent "findings". The findings that weren't actually found at all!

As much as she wanted to grunt and repeatedly bang her head against her computer, which was still making no sense whatsoever, she refrained. Listening in on one of seven's secret self-conversations could be helpful...hopefully.

She pushed the lever upward and turned the intercom back on, very careful not to make a noise so it would sound like the intercom was still off.

He continued talking to himself, which meant he hadn't heard her.

"-en get what the point of this is. I mean, she says I'm different, but how am I supposed to know half the questions she asks me, you know? Of course you don't know. If I don't know, why should you? I mean, it's not like you're someone else. You never have been, it's just been me all along, so technically I control whatever you say. Watch... Banana. Pointer finger. Cereal. TV. You know what? TV actually sounds good right now. I wish I had a TV. You think they have Desiree in here? You think she'll hear my wish? Pfft. Yeah, fat chance of that. Just look around, these walls are soundproof! Eh...besides, maybe wishing on Desiree is a bad idea. You know how she is, always twisting the wishes she grants. I swear, she's like one of those genies in the movies! You know how they always make good wishes turn bad? Yeah, that's all her. And speaking of 'all', I wonder where Cujo is in all his doggie glory. I wouldn't mind getting slimed with dog saliva right now. Better than being trapped in here with no one to say hi to. At least Cujo would say my name in dog language. I wish she would say my name for once. It would be a nice change of pace. I mean, do you ever hear me spitting out 'human' or...I dunno, her age as a number or something? You never hear me degrading her, but she does it to me all the time! Why? What did I ever do? Fight off ghosts, protect the city? How is that wrong?!"

She sighed. He wasn't having a conversation after all. He was only babbling on, sometimes not making much sense and other times sounding crazy. But then...he was left alone for hours on end each day, only having a small opportunity to summon a conversation. That could be a reason why he he kept acting like it was normal. He was so comforted by the thought of having someone listen to him and talk to him that he took every chance he got. If he was an actual person, this would be breaking her heart, to see a child so neglected that he had resorted to driving himself insane by talking to no one except his own voice.

Seven might see himself as a person, but he wasn't. He was just a ghost. He was just one more unanswered question. Just one more among this dimensional plane. Just one more test subject, a _thing_ lower than a lab rat or, as they had talked about it earlier, a guinea pig. Seven was not a person.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

She had shut down the intercom again, but checked up on him regularly. He was still jabbering on about whatever to himself. This time he wasn't even looking at his reflection. No, instead he closed his eyes and lay flat on the floor, not even bothering to levitate. At least this part of him was normal; he preferred to float just as much as the other ghosts, but grounding himself was completely understandable considering he was bored out of his mind. So one theory was right. One of the very few true ones anyway.

A tapping on the glass. She turned to look. Seven still hadn't gotten up, and had tapped the glass with the toe of one foot. He probably had something to say. Because the intercom was off, he had no other way to catch her attention. Either he wanted to say something, and chances were he did, or he was acting childish again by doing whatever it was he was doing.

Almost as if to humor him, she raised the lever. "Yes?"

He sighed in exasperation and weakly lifted his head to look at her. "I'm starving over here! Do you have any chips? I like sour cream and onion, barbeque, those nacho things-"

"Nacho cheese?" she corrected him.

"Yeah, sure. Oh, and I also like dill pickle," he finished.

"Didn't I feed you about forty-five minutes ago?"

"Ugh!" He slapped a hand over his face, letting his head drop back down. "I am a teenage boy, I need constant nourishment!"

He was whining and complaining. Just like a teenager. Boys around his- No...no, boys around his _appeared_ age did the same thing when they were hungry, which they often were. Her son, Danny, wolfed down food all the time, as though it was his last chance to ever eat again. Junk food, that boy loved to eat junk food. Then there was the Nasty Burger, his favorite hangout. Not even she, his mother, could say how much he ate there.

Danny also had friends, Sam and Tucker. Did seven have any friends? Or even acquaintances? Surely he did. He was talking something about a Desiree and a Cujo. He referred to Desiree as a genie and Cujo as a dog. Did that mean he had a pet? Was that pet a ghost? And what about Desiree, was she living or dead?

Oh, perfect. He had acquaintances. She had figured out another small mystery about seven, and it only brought new questions for her to answer. And as soon a single one of those questions was answered, either a new question popped up or the answer clashed with a different question. It felt like she was just chasing her tail with this. It seemed hopeless to try to figure him out. So far any progress that was made was stopped as answer after answer brought new and occasionally contradictory questions into the notes and test results and everything else that seemed to be irrefutable! Even as a scientist, she could only use the term "crazy".

"Seven, do you have any friends?" she asked, trying to get confirmation on that particular question.

He sat up and nervously looked at her. That question could have brought up parts of his past, which he wasn't supposed to be able to remember much of, if any bit of it at all. Anytime she mentioned something about his past, he got edgy and nervous. He was obviously hiding something, otherwise he should have no problem talking about it, especially given how he loved to converse. He would usually try, and oftentimes succeed, to veer from the subject and move her onto something else, something more comfortable for him.

"Well, do you?" she asked again.

His anxiety was evident now. He had resorted to rubbing a lock of hair between his thumb and index finger. He was thinking of an answer, one that he hoped she would accept. She knew how this worked. He hated discussing matters like this and either lied, avoided it, or refused to answer. She could easily punish him, but losing his trust was one thing she knew she shouldn't do. He would never tell her anything if he didn't trust her. It was possible that he might stop talking to her altogether. Though it grew annoying sometimes, he would occasionally reveal a little something about himself through their conversations. It came with a billion new questions, but it was better than nothing.

"Say my name," he said in a small, soft voice.

There was momentary confusion on her side but it quickly passed as she realized that he still wanted to know he wasn't alone. He still wanted to be acknowledged. If she said his name, even once, the chances of him telling her were almost one hundred percent. She did not, under any circumstances, want to bow to the will of a ghost, especially not seven, but this could prove to be a breakthrough to her research.

"Phantom," she muttered.

He looked at her, the anxiety gone, with the biggest smile she had ever seen on him before. "You said it! You said my name!"

She inwardly smiled. He was getting so excited over just one little thing, the only thing he wanted her to do. He had been called his name, and not "seven" or "ghost". Humans didn't want to be called "human", they wanted to be called by their name. They wanted to know they were an individual instead of a thing tossed aside. Their names identified them, made them realize that they weren't alone, that they were unique creatures. They wanted to know that they weren't worthless.

So hearing a human, a much higher and much more respected being, say his name was a novel experience for him. He could hardly believe it, probably still trying to process that he was realized as some_one_ instead of some_thing_. Of course, she had only said it to appease him. He would never be a person. His name would never be said again.

The inward smile vanished and she returned her inner thoughts to that of pure science.

"Now, I've said your name." Which was something only humans had; he was just choosing to impose humanism on himself by longing to be called something other than a ghost. "So tell me, do you have any friends?"

Still smiling, he nodded. "Yes, I do."

"And who are they?" she pressed.

His smile dropped and he bit his lip. "I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

He shook his head and turned his gaze to the ceiling, away from her. "I can't tell you that either."

"Do you remember who they are? Or better yet, do you remember any part of your past? Do you know how you died? Do you know _if_ you died? Did you have any family? Are they still alive today? Or are they now ghosts, like you?"

Not a single response from seven. His gaze had shifted back to her but now she doubted he was able to register so many questions at once. His eyes showed emotion... Alright, another something to add to his endless list... But...no, he _showed_ emotion. He did not feel it. He was a ghost and, despite his strange physical differences and slight psychological ones, ghosts could never feel true emotion. They could pretend, like he was doing now, but it was impossible for them to feel that which a human could. At least this was one more theory that was worth the work.

She almost glared at him. He was nothing more than a spectral entity designed on an entirely different plane of existence. He wouldn't be able to make her crumble under a puppy dog face or a playful action. There was no emotion, there was no feeling whatsoever. So if he thought he could control her thoughts that way, he was mistaken.

"Do you have a family?" he asked curiously.

Well...she needed to keep his trust... He had shared something with her, so sharing something back with him, even if it was on the slightest of personal levels, would keep him satisfied enough to let her continue sufficient research without much resistance. It would ultimately make her work that much easier and considering how hard it was to figure him out, which was far worse than any Rubix cube, his cooperation seemed a blessing. Uncooperative actions from him would induce many hardships of the already hard enough hardships she was going through right now. Needless to say, it was the very last thing she wanted. Trust was everything, at least for now.

She sighed. "I have a son and a daughter. Both of them are away from home right now; my daughter is older and is in an out-of-state college fair, and my son is on a cross country trip with his friends. My husband is in a different country altogether, studying exotic ghosts not native to this continent."

"So you have kids, huh? What are their names?" he continued.

She slowly raised an eyebrow. "Why would you take an interest in that, seven?"

He smiled. "Well, I never get called by my name. I was just wondering what your kids' names are."

Definitely a legitimate reason. Seven had always been a tad on the curious side. "My daughter's name is Jasmine and my son's name is Daniel."

His smile grew wider. "My name is Daniel. So I guess you really are calling someone by my name."

She gasped, taken aback by his comment. "Don't you ever compare yourself to my son again!"

She switched the lever downward and the intercom was turned off. There was no tap on the glass, no angered body language, no foul words...not even distress. He merely looked to the side, as if he realized he had done something wrong. But that was also impossible. Ghosts had no sense of right or wrong, no morals to guide them. He was displaying another trick, another attempt to further humanize himself. But if he wanted to trick himself so badly, then she would let him. So long as she got the essential data, she couldn't care less what he did.

But...it really did look as though he knew he was in trouble for what he did, as though he knew he had broken a rule he wasn't supposed to break. She wagered he wouldn't cross that boundary again. But for now, until she could fully calm down enough to tolerate him without thinking about him placing his existence so close to her dear son's, the intercom would stay off. He would learn his lesson by being ignored. She would not speak to or interact with him. Right now she couldn't even observe him!

She gathered a few papers and stormed upstairs, completely unable to look at seven. She would still be doing some research, at least, while she was out of the lab. And when she came back down, she wouldn't even have to look to know he would still be floating there, mindlessly playing with his gloves or making parts of himself a toy. Once he had pretended his hand was an airship, while his other hand swooped in from underneath and took it down. He had even made sound effects and background rhythms.

Once upstairs, she set her notes and new theories on the coffee table in front of the TV. She furiously stacked them in separate, orderly piles. There were still plenty downstairs but the ones up here would be enough to study for days on end, only to find that they still wouldn't add up. No matter how much she tested, no matter how many different theories she came up with, nothing ever pieced together. It was like having a puzzle with nothing but circles for pieces. They wouldn't fit and there would always be gaps between them. Well her "findings" had gaps between them and her "theories" never fit. Basically, seven was that circle-pieced puzzle she hated so much.

She reviewed paper after paper, note after note...and still found nothing. The more she thought about seven, the less sense he made. This was terrible for her research! And worse, it made everything she did with him seem pointless, useless! He didn't meet the standards of the typical ghost, or any ectoplasmic being that could be out there. He was a ghost for sure, but he was also something else. Well, no, he was only a ghost...but he possessed that which was never before found in others of his kind. That was what made him different, but there were still too many things about him that classified him as a ghost. He was almost defined, this one...

No, no he was not. Ghosts could not be defined, only the living could be defined. Even the antibodies in every creature's bloodstream could be defined. Everything about the living could be explained. Yet there was no explanation for seven. Even regular ghosts had some qualities unknown to the human race. But seven! Seven was ridiculous! He made no sense whatsoever! It was flat-out embarrassing for a scientist of her stature to be running in circles like a dog chasing its tail, sometimes reversing those circles whenever a theory failed.

How much had been revealed about seven so far, let us have a look at that. Maybe it would help her feel better, chipper even. Okay. So, she knew that seven was indeed a ghost. He personified himself and acted much more humanistic than other ghosts. He wanted human interaction. He always found something to do in order to pass time. He needed things that weren't necessary to keep him existent. His organs functioned just as a human's would. And...and there were billions of questions surrounding him. But that was it. That's all there was. It wasn't nearly enough information to be satisfactory to a nine-year-old child!

Relax, she had to relax. She would not lose her mind over seven. She would find out about him eventually, it would just take time. A lot of time. However, it would be worth it once she had all that perfect information that could be donated for a good cause to science.

...But then what? What would she do with seven? Release him? Waste money, energy, and time to keep him contained? Throw him back into the ghost zone where he could simply crawl out again?

What would become of seven once this was over? She couldn't just hand him over to the government to be labeled as government property. She was the one who caught him, she was the one who had to deal with him, and she would be the one to find out the mysteries he held. She wasn't going to give that credit to a bunch of government drones.

Well then...what would she do? She couldn't befriend seven; she was a much higher organism. He wasn't an organism at all. He shouldn't even exist! But she had to keep her thoughts together and not get stressed out over this. The fact that he somehow managed to stabilized himself enough _to_ exist was just another mystery she would figure out, in due time.

Patience was a virtue. Especially in seven's case...

She sighed in frustration, looking over her notes for the millionth time. Seven couldn't be cracked right now, so at least something true came from these confounding notes... Why would one ghost be so hard to understand? She had studied ghosts her entire life, and even today she studied them! So why...? Ever since she had rebuilt the lab to make it fifteen times the size it was before, with so much advanced technology and new containment chambers for the ghost specimens, she had discovered almost everything about ghosts. When she finally captured seven and put him in the unit that stood firmly in the middle of the lab, several yards in front of the ghost portal and looking out from no halls, she was sure she could make a scientific breakthrough. She was sure that he would complete and confirm all her "discoveries" about ghosts. But...he didn't. He made it apparent that she hardly knew a thing about ghosts.

It was hard... _He_ was hard... According to everything she had seen, everything she had looked over, there was no possible way for him to exist even on his own dimensional plane. Yet he easily existed and functioned in both worlds, both planes. It couldn't have happened but somehow it did! How was he existing when nothing about him was right? If she could answer that question, everything about him would reveal itself. Sadly, she couldn't simply answer it right away; she would have to chip away at it, taking it one little answer at a time. She would slowly work her way up...and then find out the truth.

Looking over her papers and searching for even the slightest errors, she groaned. Some things in this world weren't meant to be understood. Was seven one of them?

Her eyebrows furrowed in anger. No, he was not. No matter what, he could be understood. He _would_ be understood. And not by the government, not by some amateur ghost hunter, not by some other high-ranking ectobiologist! She would be the one, she would crack his code! And up here, he couldn't distract her. He was forced to stay down in the lab, where he could undergo tests that would undoubtedly contribute to the world. To _this_ world, to the world of the living. And she could just imagine her children's faces when they found out what she did, how she changed their way of life for the better. Perhaps it would be made easier for them to do everyday tasks. For Danny that meant making his bed, and if she was lucky, cleaning his room. For Jazz that meant organizing her endless books neatly on her bookshelves. And maybe Jack could make his own fudge from now on. It certainly would be a relief to continue on her own interests rather than spend two hours making desserts for her husband.

Maybe after she was through with seven, she could prepare a containment unit for a ghost Jack would remember to bring back home. If he remembered, that is. It would be interesting to compare seven's results to the information of an exotic ghost.

But for now...for now she had to focus on seven and seven only.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

For the next five days, she refused to interact with seven. He hated it.

The first day, she kept herself upstairs. There was no sound from seven, but she knew he was talking to himself. She knew he was distracting himself. He was probably banging on the glass every now and then trying to call up to her. He shouldn't have said what he did about her son.

The second day, she went down to the lab to check on seven. He was doing fine. He kept floating around, frantically waving his arms to get her attention. She saw him, yes, but she wasn't going to pay him any of her valuable attention. He didn't deserve it. In fact, she should never have paid attention to him in the first place. She was to blame for his actions; had she not spoken to him beyond scientific reasons, had she not been sucked into one of his useless conversations, he wouldn't be acting like this now. He wouldn't be so desperate to catch her eye.

Well he had caught her eye, just not in the way he wanted to. He had practically insulted her son, and that was something no job would fix. While seven didn't have emotions, she did and right now, they weren't very good ones. He was lucky she didn't punish him... Although technically, she was punishing him by ignoring him. He couldn't stand it. That was good, that was what she wanted to happen.

The third day, she kept herself in the lab the entire time, only getting out of seven's sight to examine the other ghosts. He was finally starting to see that she wasn't going to communicate with him anymore. His movements were slower and he didn't rap on the glass as often. He didn't wave his arms about. He hardly made an effort, in fact, to send his messages that clearly said, "TALK TO ME!" She wouldn't heed that message. If he were a person, a living creature, she would listen and talk to him. But seven was a ghost; he was not among the class of the living and never would be. He could easily be ignored, and his input about it didn't matter very much.

He didn't go to the far end of the containment unit. He stayed up front, nearest to her. He followed her like a fish follows a finger.

The fourth day, she only went upstairs to eat and drink. She stayed in the lab, mostly in front of her computer, the entire time. Seven was hardly even snapping his fingers and did almost nothing in his unit. He was obviously frustrated with her, or else he would still be banging on the glass and doing all sorts of tricks in the air so she would look at him. He had given up, aside from a few times he raised his head.

Seven had all but stopped moving. He would just float there for hours on end, head hung, completely motionless. During the second half of the day, he didn't float. He lowered himself to the ground and sat on the floor. His eyes were a bit dazed and unfocused. Was he even thinking about her anymore? Oh no! Absolutely not, she was _not_ going to start questioning even more about him! He was a ghost, who cared what he was thinking! It couldn't be anything important, being as he was locked in his unit all day and night. There wasn't much to think about when there was nothing there.

That night, seven walked unsteadily over to the front right corner of his unit, his permanent sleeping spot. Almost like a bed, she noted. A bed stayed in the same place, and a human slept on a bed. Ultimately, a human slept in the same spot every night. Although seven was not human, and although he had no bed, he went to sleep in the same spot each night. Thus, he slept like a human did.

The fifth day, the final day she didn't talk to him, he kept huddled up in his little corner. All she could see was his shoulder pressed against the glass, giving her the impression that he was still sleeping. Either that or he was still angry at her. His head was lowered, his thick, untamed hair covering his eyes. He was acting even more like a teenager by sleeping in like that. Other ghosts didn't sleep at all, which only made seven more mysterious, more unknown. Why would he need to sleep? He was dead!

As the day progressed, though, she couldn't help but notice that he hadn't woken up. He hadn't even moved. He hadn't even twitched, as far as she could tell. But every time she worried, he made her realize that he was just playing around. Maybe this was his new way to attract her attentions to him. That would thoroughly explain why he wouldn't move. After all, teenagers were stubborn. And since he was hellbent on acting like one, then he was stubborn.

After those five days were up, there came the sixth day. That was the day she talked to him, having finally been able to calm down and think straight. She was no longer angry with him, nor was she frustrated. Now he would finally stop acting like-

He was still in the same spot. Had he moved even once during the night? He hadn't moved yesterday at all. Was he just being stubborn? Was this typical for a teenager, even if they were furious? Never once had she heard of a teenager acting like this. Not moving for a whole day, that was one thing; all adolescents could be stubborn even to that extreme. But he was literally in the exact same position as yesterday, and something about him seemed very different now. Something was off. Seven wasn't one to hold grudges, or so she thought.

She bent down to examine him further, getting closer to the glass as she did so. From the looks of things, he really hadn't moved. It didn't seem as if a single one of his white hairs was out of place. He was still pressed up against the glass in the same way he went to sleep in, and the same way he had been in since yesterday. She noticed that he was breathing a little irregularly. She also noticed that...

Seven was shaking.

This wasn't normal even for him. Why was he shaking? There couldn't be something wrong, he was a ghost. No, he had to be doing something. Maybe...shedding his skin? She couldn't tell whether that thought was genius or stupid. He was so much different from the other ghosts that shedding his skin might well be what he was doing. If he _could_ do it, that is.

She rushed over to the controls of his containment unit. The temperature readings indicated that it was twelve degrees in there. It was around the same temperature as usual, nothing wrong with it. And since seven was a ghost, already dead, he thrived in cold weathers. He was comfortable in it. Heat, however, exhausted him and rendered him too lethargic to do much. He was all but disabled in temperatures above sixty to sixty-five. A weakness of all ghosts was heat, so his reaction to it was perfectly normal.

Okay, so he wasn't overheating. That was good. She checked the control readings for the air pressure in the unit. It was normal. There was no higher or lower pressure in it. What about the substances in the air? He had to breathe so could it be something in the air, something that hadn't been filtered out, that was making him like this? ...It didn't look like it...

She flipped a switch and a soft fluorescent light appeared on one end of the unit. It moved slowly over to the other end, where seven sat. He was still motionless. Hopefully this would allow the scanner to find something, to see if and what was wrong. She waited impatiently for it to complete its configuration. It seemed to find only one thing: his energy. It was dangerously low.

Now it made sense, why he wouldn't move and why he was shaky. He was giving out. But why? Why was he...well, he wasn't dying...and he couldn't live...but... Oh, for this once she would say dying. Why was he dying? He was a ghost and although they somehow expended, stored, and replenished energy, they weren't capable of losing it altogether. They would still themselves until they had reconstructed their energy reserves. Sure, seven was different but...but what? What else gave him energy if he couldn't make it himself? Could it be that he, once more unlike all the others, wasn't able to simply create and release his own energy? If that was the case then the only other alternative was to take energy from something else, to absorb it from another object. And in order to _take_ energy, he needed an object that _had_ energy. Something living. A ghost of his size and weight couldn't steal that needed energy from something as small as a bacterium or mite. To fill himself with energy, he needed something bigger, something around his size. Something like a human... Of course! That was why he acted so much like a human! The energy he consumed had to have come from a human body, thus giving him a more humane personality.

Wait...consumed...? Consume... His _consumption_ of energy... For a human to _consume_ something meant that they would eat or drink it...

She slapped her forehead. How could she...? She had forgotten to feed him! He had gone without food for five days now, and for some unknown reason, he had to eat to keep himself going. He did have a metabolism process, which like all living creatures, required him to eat. That was why he had been slowing down more and more as each day passed, that was why he had been trying so hard to get her attention. He had been trying to tell her that he was hungry. By the fourth day, he could hardly lift his head, which was why he was truly incapable of telling her anything. That was the day when he started to shut down, the day when he could barely move.

All this time his body had been burning off that energy. Ghosts did not have fat reserves, meaning they could only store energy for a limited time before completely using it up. In the case of a normal ghost, they would need only to stay still to build up their energy. However, in seven's case, he had to meet his body's demands. She had kept him from doing that. And unfortunately, one of the things he had in common with the other ghosts was that he had no fat reserves. He, too, could only store and use so much energy. A human carried fat reserves no matter what, so long as they ate. Seven could eat but couldn't carry fat. He had adipose tissue, that much she had found out through a harmless and quick biopsy near his ribcage, to the side where she couldn't hit any of his organs and therefore wouldn't disrupt any vital processes. The adipose tissue he had, though, had no function other than to cushion and support his organs. For some reason the cells wouldn't store away excess sugars. This meant that no matter how much food he ate, no matter how fattening those foods were, he could not depend on them for extended use of energy.

She assumed this was one reason he needed to be fed every two or three hours. Since his metabolic cycle lessened dramatically during sleep, she only had to get up once during the night to feed him. If he was hungry, he would already be awake and waiting, ready for his meal. If he wasn't hungry enough yet, he would still be asleep. The mornings were met with large breakfasts to help bring him out of that drowsy, lazy state. His body, rather than his words, let her know if he truly needed to be fed again. Oftentimes he would complain about not having snack foods to munch on, but he was far to energetic to be truthful about it.

She looked to make sure he was actually alright and not joking around, even though the answer was very clear. He still had not moved and was still shaking. She had once tested how long he could go on without food. The first two days were okay, but by the end of the third day, he'd passed out. It had taken a lot to wake him up long enough for him to eat something. After that, he curled up and went back to sleep only to wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in around two hours. A human could go for around, depending on their weight, a week and a half to two weeks without food before their systems began failing. They would probably pass out around that time as well, maybe a day or two before. Seven could only go about five to six days without food before his systems began failing. If he could die, he would die twice as fast as any human.

And today was the sixth day. If she didn't do something quick, his organs would start failing. For some reason, he needed them. If they shut down, her best guess would be that he would never again be able to move. He would never see or hear, being as there were organs that allowed those senses to work. He would never taste, feel, or smell. Her worst fear was that he would stop breathing. If his lungs went, his heart would go within about five minutes. His brain would stop functioning and the rest of his organs and glands would stop with it. It would be like watching an unplugged machine whine down as it quickly turned off all its components.

Seven would soon be that unplugged machine.

She rapidly grabbed three medical tubes, an apple and a cluster of grapes, a funnel, a blender, and a cup. She hurried downstairs, careful not to drop anything. Everything was set down on top of her papers on her desk. The medical tubes were sterilized, as well as the mask that cam with them. There were many medical machines and equipment down in the lab in case they were ever needed. She never thought she would have to use any on seven.

She hustled into his unit and started setting up an oxygen concentrator. It released a beep as it turned on, a small yellow light slowly flashing as a signal that the machine was working. She connected two of her three medical tubes to it and oxygen was softly pumped out. There was a reason seven had lungs, and that was to collect oxygen.

Next, she tightened the funnel around the end of her third tube, violently shaking it to make sure it wouldn't come loose. This tube wasn't attached to anything. Instead she put it on a folded paper towel.

She held the grapes over the blender and quickly smoothed her hand over the cluster, effectively pulling most of the grapes off. She picked off the few remaining ones and dropped them into the blender. She picked the stem off the apple and tossed it in with the grapes. Covering the top with its lid, she turned it on and set it to puree. The fruits started swirling and clashing and smashing into each other. They died a violent death when the blades started ripping them apart.

The most important thing, the most important piece of her plan to help seven, was seven himself.

She went over to him. She was still curled up in a little ball and his body simply wouldn't stop trembling. She noticed something new as she got close to him, something she didn't realize before. He was having a hard time breathing. His breaths were shaky and strained. He was literally gasping for air, but was having a hard time actually getting it in. She was afraid this would happen. He was so low on energy that his diaphragm was struggling to expand and contract. This was resulting in labored breathing, which, for a being who burned out much more quickly than a human, was a sound signal that he was running out of time and _fast_. It didn't help that she didn't know when he had started to have trouble breathing.

She pulled on his wrist to see if he could get up. He only slid from the glass to the floor. It confirmed her suspicions that he couldn't do anything anymore. She lifted him up. A ghost was light, the more human-looking ones usually around sixty-five to seventy pounds. He was about twenty to twenty-five pounds. His body would give out any moment now.

She carried him over to where the oxygen concentrator, the funnel tube, and the still-blending blender were and gently set him down. Now came the careful task of the medical work.

First and foremost had to come the two tubes that were connected to the oxygen concentrator. She held his mouth open and slowly inserted one of the tubes down his throat. She kept lowering it straight down, following his esophagus until she reached a three-way intersection. Straight down led to the stomach, left or right led to either of his lungs. She pressed the tube to the left, mindful to feel for the split in tissue that indicated the barrier between the bronchial tube, the pathway to the lung, and the continuation down to the stomach. Still veering left, she made it into the left lung, but made sure to press it in only a quarter of the way down so as not to rupture any alveoli. She mirrored her actions with the second oxygen tube, this time with the right lung. In awhile his breathing would stabilize.

That didn't mean he was out of the woods though. Even with fresh, clean oxygen being steadily pumped into his lungs, therefore oxygenating his ectoplasm, his skin was becoming paler than usual. It was pale even for a ghost, and that was saying something since most of them were actually transparent. It also meant that he was starting to slip. This wasn't good, he would die soon if she didn't do someth- No, no! A ghost was already dead, it couldn't die. She was just fearful that she could lose the only specimen that could provide such valuable information to her research.

She stopped the blender and poured its contents into a cup. She set the cup down beside her and held his mouth open again, this time pushing both oxygen tubes to their respective sides. She slid the funnel tube down his throat, not having to worry about getting the tube into a different pathway, unlike with the oxygen tubes. She was very careful to stop only _just_ below the entrance to the stomach. Any lower and it could hit digestive acid, causing it to dissolve, melt, and crumple up inside him. At that point the tube would be ruined and she might not be able to get it out without harming him.

She grabbed the three tubes and held them together in a bunch. She slid the face mask over the tubes and rested it firmly against seven's mouth, which would hold the tubes together in the bunch she had made. The strap would come later; right now she needed to focus on getting food into him.

She picked up the cup and held it over the funnel. This was where things got scary. If some of that liquid were to back up into his trachea, the pressure could push the tube itself further into his stomach. And if it kept backing up, it would spill into his lungs. There was no valve to stop that from happening, so she had to use caution. She decided it was best to take it slow, trickling the contents of the cup into the funnel. It coated the inside of the tube a purplish color, which was to be expected from the grapes, and disappeared down into his throat.

Once the cup was empty, she checked for signs of distress, feeling his chest and just below his sternum. His stomach had definitely gotten what it needed. His breathing was stable and his heartbeat was steady, and not irregular like it had been before due to the problems he had trying to breathe. It didn't feel like anything had backed up into his lungs. In fact, it didn't feel like anything had backed up at all.

She sighed in relief. He would be fine now. She would keep the funnel tube in just in case he needed more food.

She lifted his head and fixed the mask's strap over it. He would need a pillow. Not that she cared; he was a ghost and nothing but. The pillow was simply to keep his head lifted while he was hooked up to the oxygen concentrator. For a human, a blanket would be necessary, but for seven, it was best if he was kept in the cold conditions of his containment unit.

She put a pillow under his head and walked out. All that was left to do now was wait. If he didn't wake up in around an hour or two, she would give him more food and keep waiting. If he still didn't wake up then something else was going on...


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

After the first hour had passed, she checked up on him every ten minutes. Anything could happen... One of the tubes could slip. That wasn't likely since the face mask was holding them firmly together. His stomach acid could rise and begin disintegrating the funnel tube. That was also unlikely to happen since the acid was mixed with the fruit smoothie, and thus was less acidic. The oxygen concentrator could malfunction. That was a possibility that she would have to watch for.

So far seven hadn't even moved. It was to be expected since he was still unconscious, but if he didn't wake up, she would have to feed him again. It would prolong the waiting period and she was already nervous enough. If food and oxygen failed to rouse him, he would have to be considered to have gone into a coma. Well, if that was possible for a ghost.

Seven had never gone six days without food before. Even now, while he had a machine doing most of his breathing and a tube that sent soft food directly down to his stomach, he was burning off calories. And calories were used as energy by any living creature. For the living, too many calories was a bad thing, as it resulted in weight gain. Seven could not gain weight beyond sixty-five pounds, but could more than easily lose it. He wouldn't look skinny because his adipose cells wouldn't store any sugars, and therefore wouldn't multiply. Likewise, the cells wouldn't shrivel or be discarded. His body wouldn't consume any muscle fibers, ectoplasm, or anything that wasn't in his stomach. Everything had to be digested to be absorbed into him; that was the only way he could gain energy. Just for this once, why couldn't he be like other ghosts? It would be so much better for the both of them if he could just stay still for awhile and restore himself.

But after six days, this was what he had become. He was still too weak to breathe on his own. It was clear from the monitor of the oxygen concentrator that his lungs couldn't expand enough to catch enough air. Basically, he couldn't take a full breath. Without those tubes, he would still be struggling just to take tiny gasps.

He was still pale... She had never seen a ghost get that pale before... His face held less color than it normally did. His hair was completely white, and his skin was becoming that color exactly. That was bad for humans. She didn't know about ghosts, especially since they did best in cold temperatures... A human's skin paled in cold temperatures, but a ghost's did not.

She was worrying now, and this time she wasn't going to be proven wrong for worrying. This wasn't good. No, this couldn't be good. Even when he had passed out around the third day during those metabolism tests, he had never lost so much color. She didn't know how this was possible, but...his body was exhibiting alarming symptoms. But of what, what was happening to him?! She did everything she could!

She grabbed a hospital bed and wheeled it inside his unit. He was definitely light enough for her to pick him up, so it wasn't hard getting him onto the bed. The only hard part was making sure she didn't accidentally rip the tubes out.

She put one hand on his chest. He was breathing good...but it wasn't him doing the work. His lungs would be fine for now, but the same couldn't be said for his heart. It was beating slowly. When she moved her hand to the position at the base of his pulmonary trunk, the pressure there wasn't very promising. The aorta seemed to be having just as much trouble. For a human, it would be blood, but for seven, he wasn't pumping enough ectoplasm throughout his body. That would explain why he was getting so pale.

Note to self: _never_ forget to feed seven.

"Seven?" she said, halfheartedly thinking sound had a possibility of waking him.

His eyes didn't flutter, his head didn't turn. He didn't hear her. He was too deep into unconsciousness...

Wait! He was unconscious...but how? He was a ghost, and she had never seen a ghost lose consciousness. In fact... Come to think of it, seven was the only ghost she had ever seen pass out, and that was from lack of food. It was only three days. She had thought that four days was the limit, maybe five, before he started to burn out. But she had never pushed it beyond three days. This was double that time, and she couldn't guarantee he would make it. Things weren't looking good right now...

More extensive research would have to be done, both to help her studies and to help him through this. But the only way she could get results would be to study him, to test him.

"You can't live or die," she mumbled, "so what will happen to you if everything stops working?"

Other ghosts wouldn't have passed out to begin with, but if they ever did, they would have woken up by now...right? Another abnormality of seven...he could faint. He obviously couldn't make his own energy, it had to be replenished through means of that which the living needed. This was a property that was classified as belonging only to living creatures, which were only made on this plane of existence. It was classified as a living property...and somehow it wound up in seven...

Well, there was really nothing more she could do now, except wait. But just in case... She wheeled in a small, portable table with a silver tray that held four needles, some alcohol pads, some cotton balls, and a roll of gauze. If she needed to inject nutrients into him, she could suck up a nutrient-rich liquid and inject it straight into his ectoplasm. She had never done it before but his anatomy was a stunning replica of a human's, so if it worked on a human, it might work on him. However, it would have to be a last resort because his body couldn't eat itself, which meant that he couldn't use up anything other than what was in his stomach. She wasn't sure that injecting nutrients into his body would work; the cells might not accept it, the nutrients might fail to diffuse into them.

The ectoplasm he had was distributing oxygen throughout his body and each cell in it. What would happen if that oxygen ran out? And why did he need oxygen when other gases didn't affect him? The elements that would kill a human did absolutely nothing to him. But if he was deprived of the elements _needed_ by a human, he was affected. That which kept humans alive kept him sustained. He required what humans did, whereas other ghosts did not. How was this possible? He was a ghost, just like any other...yet he hardly seemed like a ghost. He looked like one. He had all their powers. He spoke like one, at times. He could get aggressive like one, if he felt he was in danger.

So he must be a ghost. No human, or any living creature for that matter, could do any of these things. Carbon monoxide? Sulfur mustard? These two gases would destroy humans, yet seven had no problem with them whatsoever. This further proved that he was a ghost. So...why did he respond to required human substances? How was it possible that he couldn't be fazed by anything harmful to a living creature, yet his body responded negatively to a lack of the substances necessary to humans?

She sighed as she turned to go back to her computer, preparing to add just twenty more questions to her already-infinite list of questions, each of which had gone unanswered. And as she was adding those questions, she couldn't help but think about why seven had deteriorated so rapidly. She knew he burned off calories much faster than any human, but if his anatomy was so similar, then why did his adipose cells fail to store the unused sugars? It was like there really _was_ a part of him that couldn't function properly. Those cells got the nutrients they needed and clearly used them to stay active, so what was preventing them from doing the storage half of their job? The cells that made up adipose tissue were meant to do two jobs: cushion and support organs, and store all excess sugars until the body needed it. These cells only did one of those jobs. Why? He ate and drank but clearly his sugars were used up all too quickly, within a two hour time frame. As a result of the cells' failure to store away that unused energy, his metabolism rate skyrocketed and any calories he ate were diminished in the blink of an eye. This wasn't supposed to happen. Well, not in a human anyway.

So why was this happening to _him_? Everything else was working just as it should, helping his body sustain itself. But apparently, six days was pushing it too far for him. He could be considered in a coma by now. Normally he wouldn't have been considered in a coma until four hours from when she first fed him. If he didn't wake up in two hours, she would feed him again and wait another two hours, making that four hours total. However, upon seeing just how weak he had become, his chances to keep himself going were slimming down with every ten minutes that passed.

So he was now in a coma thanks to her forgetfulness to feed him. She really shouldn't have gotten so angry, and it was even worse that she had punished him by choosing to ignore him and his actions. She wouldn't do that anymore. He had been trying to warn her for as long as he was conscious. She didn't even look at him until she realized that he wasn't moving anymore. She kept thinking he was just desperate to get her attention when in reality, he was trying to tell her that he was fading. The first day, now at least that was understandable. The second day, that could also be passed off. The third day was when he had slowed down severely, and the fourth when he had begun to rapidly lose any energy he had left. By the fifth day, he had lost so much energy that he had fallen unconscious and had been unable to focus his energy on anything but breathing and keeping up a heartbeat. He was so low that he had begun to slowly suffocate through the night.

She was lucky to have found him this morning, on the sixth day. He had been fighting to take the tiniest gasps, trying his level best to sustain himself. Had she left him alone for ten more minutes, he would have completely given in.

What would that mean for him though? If he had stopped functioning, what would have happened? Would he have simply disappeared? Would he have evaporated into wisps? Would his spirit have left this world forever?

She wasn't willing to let him go like this, not yet. He was too hard to capture and far too valuable to her research to be given up like that. And...and it pained her to know that she had done this to him. This was her fault. He was a ghost, of course he was going to say offensive things! He also played a key role in her experiments, in her final results. She needed him for this. If she lost him, she lost all her work. She had come too far to let him give up!

But for now there really was nothing she could do. From now on it was just him. If he thought he was alone before...

"And _of course_ these measures make no sense," she grunted. " So _of course_ seven is still an unexplained abomination."

Why was she talking to herself anyway? Had she really become so used to being able to talk to seven that she had come to rely on him as company while her family was away? It made perfect sense since humans were very social creatures. Psychologically, they had to interact with something. Seven had the same desire. Ghosts were known to be social or antisocial, depending on their personality, so seven was normal in that matter. He talked to her, she talked to him...it was only logical that she subconsciously wanted to interact with him. She had nothing else to socialize with, so he had become her only option.

She kept typing down all the questions and all the possible answers. There had to be ten different programs up on her computer already. It was a good thing she had exchanged her old computer with a much better new one. This one, being made for elongated research, had twenty times the memory space she had before, allowing her to run multiple programs without slowing down her computer. The CPU usage was always kept low.

She remembered that the intercom was still on and looked back at the containment unit. Behind the glass, seven was still unconscious and it didn't look like he had moved at all. She pulled the lever down. Now seven could be surrounded by silence. If he was anything like a human, which he was, he wouldn't want to wake up to noise. In fact, he would probably want to close his eyes and stay still while he rested. He would probably try to go back to sleep. If he roused, he would be tired and exhausted. If he woke, she would take the chance to feed him again while he was still conscious. His metabolism dropped during sleep, so it would heighten again if he woke up. It meant that even if he was laying still, even if he was trying to go back to sleep, he would be using up high amounts of energy.

She paused on her typing for a second to look at seven. He was still unmoving. Still unconscious.

"You know," she mumbled to him, even though she knew he couldn't hear her, "you are a very odd specimen. Your calculations don't calculate. Your measures don't measure. Your configurations don't configure. You are a ghost but you're not a ghost. You are barely any help as of far. How many questions can you possibly bring up before you finally run out? If you could _not_ stress me out for once..." She let her voice trail off, realizing that her words were pointless.

She already knew they were pointless, but now, as she saw seven still laying motionless on the bed, everything began to sink in. Nothing about him made sense... For some reason that realization struck a cord in her somewhere. It was almost like that one sentence was trying to tell her something, but what?

She decided not to linger on it. There were too many other questions that needed her attendance right now. Why was his physiology so akin to a human's? How did he have moving, working, functioning organs? Why was it that he had to eat to sustain himself? How was it possible for him to lose consciousness? Why did his weight always stop at exactly sixty-five pounds?

She wondered how much he weighed now that he had some food in him. When she first came into that unit after five whole days and half of the sixth one, he weighed around twenty to twenty-five pounds. Seven's weight, when his feedings were thrown off schedule, tended to fluctuate. It could go up or down, but it would not go beyond sixty-five pounds. She realized then that he _could_ go down to zero, but would give out before then.

If she was lucky, he weighed a pound or two more than he had before.

At that thought, she knew just how dire this had become. He was _lucky_ to have gained a single pound. Even for a ghost, one pound didn't matter much, so this was incredibly serious. He was slower to lose weight than to gain it. A pound was a big step for him, and it held a possible chance of recovery. It would be one more pound back to his normal weight.

And his heart... Human hearts didn't carry weight well. A heart needed a steady and healthy weight or else it would put strain on its ability to pump blood. Eventually, if it became too much to handle, the heart would stop beating. Since seven's heart was so like a human's, and since he needed it to pump ectoplasm throughout his body, he needed to get back to his healthy weight. And...unfortunately, that could take several days, along with large meals every two hours. Every time he dropped weight, such as she had tested him for, he ate with vigor to compensate.

It only made her wonder why, when he was fed such large portions so frequently during a weight loss, he was still slow to get back to his normal weight. And when he did finally reach that weight, why could he not go further? If he ate more than he should, meaning that if he was full but kept going, he would experience increased activity. He would still require a feeding every two hours though. Why? Depending on how much he overate, his activity would continually increase. She had tested his limits on this matter before and what she found was truly a spectacle. Seven would literally start flying around _everywhere_, bouncing into and off of the walls, talking nonstop to no end... All this to the point where he was nothing but a grayish blur!

This proved to her that there was only one outlet for the energy he had in him. He could never truly overdose, so to speak, on food because his metabolism heightened when he began to overeat. The higher the metabolism, the more hyper he became. There was a threshold to his energy levels and if he was pushed past that boundary, that energy had to go somewhere. His body expelled it by burning it off faster than it was coming in, until he finally settled down after two hours' time, after which he would ask for more food.

She knew when she was beginning to feed him too much by his body language. There was actually a few stages he went though:

First he would be fine, the normal amount of energy being expended on regular movements. He would usually start to pick at the floor, trying to find something to do. At this stage, he was just barely beginning to overeat and therefore everything he did was normal.

Second, he would begin to get twitchy and a little restless. His desire to find something to do was growing, but could still be easily controlled.

Third, he would stand on the ground and start pacing back and forth, still twitchy and this time _very_ restless. It was becoming harder for him to control himself in terms of movement. He felt as though he had to move, and therefore he was reluctant to stop moving. This was the first sign, easier to notice than the twitching, that told her he was passing his limits.

Fourth, he would be completely unable to stay still for more than a few seconds. At least at this stage he _could_ stop moving, even if it was for a brief period of time.

Fifth, he couldn't stop moving around even if he tried. He would usually stay above ground, darting from one end of the containment unit to the other. If he wasn't in the air, he was running around on the ground with a huge smile on his face. Darting or running, he would not stop chattering. His teeth clacked constantly as he tried to slow down on his words, his speech was hard to understand because his tongue was too active, and every word started to melt into the next one.

Sixth, he was a bunch of flashes, barely slowing down. He was still talking but nothing he said was understandable. He could and would continue to eat and everything on his plate was gone in an instant. By now he sounded like a grasshopper bumping into its jar as it tried to hop out, meaning he was beginning to bump into the walls. This only happened every now and then though.

The seventh stage was the last stage she had ever pushed him to and never made arrangements to push him further. This was because she couldn't stand it; it drove her nuts! The seventh stage was by far the worst. He couldn't stop zooming around his unit. He was still talking, she assumed, but all she could hear was a loud buzz. By now, the grasshopper-thump had grown into a million bird-hitting-the-window-thumps.

She might as well have put a million birds in his unit because that was exactly what it sounded like...except a hundred times louder. A new sound was introduced as seven's body looked like it painted the glass. The closest she could come to describing it was the sound a car makes when you're on the side of a freeway. It was muffled, thankfully, but it still sounded like that as he flashed everywhere. All that combined with the buzz of his mouth was too much for her to take and shutting the intercom off wouldn't help at all.

It was worse than a malfunctioning pinball game, where he was the ball and the ball was going haywire. Too much food sent him into overdrive.

This went on for _two hours_ before he would slow down over a period of five minutes, having used up all that energy. And, _because_ he had used up all that energy, he would have to be fed again.

She would need to test him on his hyperactivity a few more times to get more results to compare with his metabolic rate, but under no circumstances would she push him to that awful stage again. The furthest she would go would be the fifth stage. The seventh stage would haunt her for the rest of her life. She shuddered. She never knew a ghost could act like that...


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

She smiled.

"Well, did you three do anything exciting yet?" she asked over the phone.

A grunt from the other end. "No, not really..."

"What about that amusement park you were supposed to be going to? You love thrill rides."

"Yeah, see, that's the thing. I would've had a blast! All three of us went on one of those machines that spins you around really fast. It was awesome!"

"Then why wasn't it fun?"

"It _was_ fun, until Tucker threw up on me. The only 'fun' we had after that was getting me cleaned off."

She laughed lightheartedly. "You should enjoy this, Danny. You're getting to spend time away from home and you get to be with your friends all summer."

"I don't enjoy being covered in vomit. Do you have any idea what it's like to smell half-digested chili dogs?! It's disgusting! And it was all over me! It was enough to make Sam puke, but at least she didn't use me as her barf bucket... Unlike Tucker, she held it down until she could get to a bathroom. I was the lucky one who didn't eat before the ride."

"Did you eat after?"

"You have to be kidding me! After seeing everything Tucker ate for lunch? On _me_?! I don't think I'll eat for the next two days! You weren't there, Mom, that image is stuck in my head forever..." Danny let out a shaky breath. "I still can't believe my best friend did that to me..."

"I'm sure he didn't mean it, sweetie. I'll admit I'm having problems with food back home as well."

"Sick?"

"No. I'll let you know when you get back. I think you'll be very excited..." she let her voice trail off in a singsong voice.

She heard mumbling in the background followed by her son saying, "I have to go now, Mom. Sam's dying to get away after seeing all that _blegh_."

Laughing again, this time in a motherly fashion, she said her goodbyes and hung up.

It felt good to talk to her children. They had been away for two weeks now and she was wanting to check up on them. Seven was what was holding her back though. She was always inclined to keep a watchful eye on him. Especially now, when he was in a coma and on a primitive form of life support. Although in his case it couldn't be called "life" support. It would be better off called "ectoplasmic" support, but somehow the name just didn't roll off the tongue like "life" support did.

So for now at least, it would be called "life" support.

She noticed that it had been two hours. Time to feed seven again. Right now all she could manage was a fruit smoothie. Fruit was nutritious and he obviously needed nutrients, despite his love of junk food.

She went upstairs, grabbed a banana and another apple, and came back downstairs to prepare another smoothie. It was the only thing that could fit through the funnel tube.

He really was like a teenager. A teenager in a coma... And it was all her fault. If she hadn't acted so childish, he wouldn't be on the verge of...uh...well, burning out. It wasn't like he could die, so saying "dying" was a wrong statement, a wrong word. Basically, he wouldn't be in a coma right now. He would be awake and doing whatever kept him occupied. Seeing him like this, though, was new and strange to her. It was unexpected yet very well expected, once she realized the careless, horrible mistake she had made.

Whatever. Just...whatever. He was a ghost and nothing more. The only reason she felt obliged to care about him at the moment was because he was such a vital element to her research. Any mistake she made couldn't be forgiven anyway. Sure, seven was different, but being as he was still a ghost, he was only capable of holding grudges. That was what ghosts were known for, grudges. That, and revenge. If seven ever woke up, he would only begrudge her. It was unsure whether he would seek vengeance though, considering he was the "good guy", the "hero". Ghosts couldn't be good. Maybe they weren't evil either, so as held by ghastly standards, but by human standards, they were evil. They were the "bad guys", the "villains". Seven could be no different from that.

She walked into seven's unit and prepared the blender. Food. On. Puree.

She went over to seven and her eyes widened. He...he wasn't in a coma... His eyes were half open, but open. He was awake.

His green eyes flickered over to her. They were dazed, very unfocused. Everything had to be such a dizzy blur to him. He still looked at her though, even with his weakened state. Even though she did this to him, he looked at her. There was no anger, no disappointment, no disgust...no anything. The only thing he did was try to pull the tubes out. She grabbed his arm before he could reach them. He didn't try to fight against her; he simply let his arm go limp and allowed her to set it down any way she wanted it. She chose to lay it over his stomach. As she did, she noticed that his breathing had evened out. She couldn't tell whether it was from the oxygen concentrator or his own lungs, but his breathing was fine now. His chest slowly and steadily rose up and down. However, stable breathing or not, she was going to keep him hooked up until he was strong enough to move again.

He lifted one arm up to her, his hand loosely clutching a needle filled with a green substance. It swished around in the barrel. Ectoplasm. He was giving her his blood. Why? Wait...no, this was definitely a trick. There was no way this was real ectoplasm. While seven was different, he was just like any other ghost in the fact that he wouldn't give her anything but bad intentions after she starved him and then nearly put him in a coma.

She shoved his arm away. "This has a greater chance of being poison than ectoplasm!"

He stared at her for a few seconds before weakly dropping the needle onto the floor. It didn't shatter like she thought it would, but hit the ground with a clink. His eyes moved lazily from her to the table right beside him, the table that held the needles. So that was where he'd gotten the needle from... She had forgotten about that table, what with all the stress lately.

Despite his shaky movements, he reached out to get another needle, an empty one. She knew what he was doing; it was inevitable. She made no attempt to stop him though. Maybe he wasn't going to do what she thought, maybe he was doing something else. Maybe he was going to throw that thing at her. It would make a lot more sense than-

He stuck his arm with the needle and used a thumb to push the top part up, drawing the ectoplasm straight from his body. It was slowly done and seeing how weak he already was, draining his own ectoplasm probably wasn't his best idea. Yet she still let him do it. She knew it would weaken him further, but she still let him do it. He wanted her to have it. He was willing to give her a sample of his ectoplasm, knowing very well that she wanted it for her research... He was different, he was very different, but this was absurd. He was a ghost, why was he-? Oh. Of course, why didn't she see it sooner? He couldn't process thought correctly yet. All logic was lost to him, for now at least. In short, he didn't know what he was doing. It made perfect sense now. She could use this to her advantage while it lasted.

He pulled the needle out from him and looked back up at her, more exhausted than before. He held the needle as tightly as he could so it wouldn't slip, and held it out to her. It wasn't poison. He was trying to get her to realize that. Okay, so maybe he had a little sense in him, but he still didn't know what he was doing.

Advantage, she reminded herself, advantage.

She took the needle from him and no sooner than she did, his arm fell back down, hanging over the bed.

"Good," she said evenly. "You've saved me the trouble."

He only looked at her. He was...he was very weak. She frowned. And she did this to him. No! He was a ghost, since when did a ghost getting hurt matter to her?

Oh, right. She quickly went over to the blender and poured its contents into the same cup she had used earlier. She then went back to seven and held his funnel tube up. He had trouble following her with his eyes. He was dizzy and couldn't focus well, but that was normal considering he had just come out of a deep sleep, what could possibly be classified as a short-lived coma, without much energy left. He seemed startled and uncomfortable when he felt the cold tube, thanks to his freezing core temperature, suddenly warm up as the not-nearly-as-cold smoothie made its way down into his stomach. He had eaten cold food before, but never through a tube that went directly to his stomach.

"Just don't take these tubes out and leave the face mask on," she ordered. "Two of those tubes go to your lungs and help you breathe; the tube in the middle with the funnel on the end of it goes down to your stomach and helps you eat. Or in this case, drink. You're getting what you need this way, so do what I say."

He tensed up and furrowed his eyebrows, clearly not partial to this situation, but didn't move and obeyed her. It was probably the warmth. While humans would find it cold, seven was finding it warm. Maybe _too_ warm, maybe it was hot to him. One thing that was different about him was that his entire esophagus was lined with a very thick layer of mucus and digestive enzymes. Seven could eat hot foods without even feeling the heat from it thanks to this. The food was then covered in mucus, which kept the heat trapped as it traveled down to his stomach, where it would lose heat as the stomach began to churn. It was as if his body was designed to chill anything hot in it.

The reason he felt what was probably searing heat right now was because the tube had scraped away all or most of that mucus and blocked the way for more to be secreted. Therefore, his throat burned, or at least felt extremely uncomfortable.

His core temperature was a constant sixteen degrees, which was enough to freeze anything that went into him. She had never seen him get sick and his extreme temperature was probably why; all antigens would be frozen solid in a number of seconds. His body temperature was why the room temperature was kept at twelve degrees. Just like humans, the outside needed to be cooler than the inside, otherwise he would start to overheat. He could withstand it, but if he reached a temperature above a certain degree range, his body could no longer ignore or fight the heat. As a result, he could become unstable and melt into ectoplasm. In theory, that is.

One of the things about ghosts that was still unknown to humans was that their ectoplasm couldn't freeze, no matter how low the temperature. This strange substance required no friction or heat surrounding it to keep from freezing. Even if a ghost happened to be trapped in a block of ice, their ectoplasm wouldn't freeze over and they would be able to move as soon as they got out. This had been tested on every ghost specimen she had so far and the results were the same. The results were the same for seven as well. No matter how cold, he wouldn't freeze. If he was in a block of ice, he wouldn't freeze. If he was set free from that block of ice, he could still move and function just as if he had never been in that ice.

A ghost's ectoplasm never had ice crystals in it, meaning it was never even close to freezing. Yet it _did_ remain cold until the outside temperature changed, in which the ectoplasm would change with it. This was why ghosts were so easy to overheat. Their "blood" had to remain cold so they could withstand the most extreme temperatures. Antarctica would be a paradise for them. Forget Antarctica, they would have a party on Pluto! The colder the better.

If she could figure out how ectoplasm withstood all the extremely frigid temperatures that would kill a human in five seconds, she could make a formula that, when injected into a human's bloodstream, would stave off ice crystals from forming. Ice crystals were what caused death in cold enough weather. They froze the plasma in the blood and formed in the body, their sharp ends blocking the passageways of blood vessels and rupturing cells of both the blood and the cells of the tissue. They were what killed the body. However! If she could invent something that would prevent the crystals from forming, humans could live in the same temperatures ghosts could.

Seven may be different, but his ectoplasm worked the same way as other ghosts' did. He could never freeze.

He grunted as she was about to walk out of the unit. She turned around.

He looked down at the face mask and pointed to it.

She shook her head. "Not yet."

His eyes showed annoyance, but she knew better than to believe it was real emotion. To impose humanism was a strong urge all ghosts had, be it a good or bad impression. To fool an ectobiologist like that was moronic and impossible. He would figure that out eventually. But of course, being as he was the lowest of organisms, he might not ever figure it out. Ghosts continued to do it whether she was there or not, so they obviously didn't get that she knew what they were doing. They weren't on the same level of intelligence as humans were.

A new thought struck her. Animals didn't have the same level of intelligence either. Not that a mere ghost could ever be compared to an animal in such a manner, but animals strongly followed instinct. Was it possible that ghosts had instincts? Seven seemed to exhibit an instinct... Three times she had let a ghost in his unit, all male in case he chose to submit to a female, and each time they had ended up fighting. Seven wasn't aggressive by nature, like other ghosts. He stayed calm until another ghost was introduced to his unit, to which he responded by becoming extremely wary and tense. He didn't strike first. This might have been because the unit negated all his powers. The only power he could use was flight, which she figured the unit couldn't negate because that "power" could actually just be part of a ghost, not unlike muscle contraction was to a human.

A human would do the same as seven if something they saw as a threat was near. If the threat got closer and started to seem intimidating, a fight-or-flight instinct would take hold and their adrenaline levels would shoot up to the point where they reacted almost blindly. Seven had displayed this same action whenever a ghost entered his unit; when it got too close and began to intimidate him, his adrenaline spiked and he lashed out. But because he had fought these ghosts before, and because he had so much experience being near them and assessing their weaker points, he was able to react appropriately. He remained his usual self, cocky and arrogant, very juvenile, but became different in the sense that he wouldn't listen to her when he fought. He was defending himself; he had gone into a self-defense mode that made him all but oblivious to her words. Either he didn't hear her, or he ignored her. Knowing him, he was probably ignoring her, but not exactly on purpose.

So...one ghost had acted on pure instinct, even if he did manage to control himself. Did that mean the others did too? Were they just as capable of self control as seven? Come to think of it, none of the other ghosts seemed to try hard enough... In animals and humans, males would be reluctant to hurt females. If they did, they wouldn't be as violent toward them as they would towards other males. Females weren't nearly as reluctant and tended to be equally aggressive toward both genders. All ghosts that seven had fought were male.

What if seven was actually a female? That would explain why he could so easily fight off males of his species. Or perhaps it was males of _her_ species...? He looked like a male, but that didn't mean he was one. Males were aggressive toward males but not as much toward females. Females were equally aggressive toward both genders. It made perfect sense... "He" may very well be a "she".

She grinned and happily jotted her new findings down. Seven was a _female_. Looking at _her_ outwardly, _she_ seemed male, but in actuality, _she_ was female. How did she miss that before?! This was amazing, it explained a little more about him, well...her.

"Oh-ho-ho!" she squealed excitedly. "I've finally found something that adds up!"

This could easily be considered the best day of her life. Although...with seven so weak, it might not- NO! Seven was research, not something with an actual conscience. He-...no, _she_, was merely acting humanistic, but that was it. She really must stop treating him..._her_, as if _she_ was a person. She would also have to get used to referring to seven as a female.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

After filing her latest notes, she peered through the glass at seven, who had apparently reawakened.

She took a quick glance at the vile of ectoplasm. It was green, and still frigid. Well, to her it was that cold, but it had probably warmed up significantly in the time it had been outside seven's body.

To see seven conscious was a huge relief, enough to make her smile and let out a deep breath. It meant that she wasn't going to lose her. And after all that work, all those numbers, and all the time put into her, losing her was like losing a piece of life itself.

She walked into seven's unit and put a hand on his-..._her_ chest. Her heart felt fine, a steady beat pulsing at a good rate. The aorta and pulmonary trunk were finally having ease pumping ectoplasm, meaning that the superior and inferior vena cava were successfully circulating it. As for her lungs, they should be okay now if the heart and its major vessels were working properly.

She gripped the face mask and looked seven in the eye. Glowing emerald orbs merely stared back up at her, obviously waiting for the riddance of all the tubes.

Very gently and equally as carefully, she slid the face mask off, pulling all three tubes out with it. It forced a sudden and intense pressure on her lungs and a deep gasp was heard as her diaphragm realized that its break was over. A look of extreme discomfort crossed seven's face as she did so, but it was gone only moments after the tubes were out.

The same green eyes looked down at a now free mouth and she closed it for the first time since she fell into a coma. A smile formed on seven's lips as she moved her jaw all around, bathing in the normalcy and relief she must be feeling.

She then attempted to talk, her eyes moving straight back to her researcher. "Thanks."

"You just came out of a coma; why are you thanking me?" she asked as if she could care less for her answer.

"Well, for one, you got all that evil _stuff_ out of my body. And I thought the second reason was pretty obvious when I gave you some of my blood," she replied, shrugging at the last sentence.

There seven went, talking about blood as if she had it.

"Please, I have every right to believe you were too dazed to focus. Your thoughts were illogical at the time and you did something you were hardly even aware of."

She frowned at the comment. "That's not true. You took care of me. I could've died, you know. You could've _let_ me die, but you chose to save me."

Maddie rolled her eyes. "You're a ghost; you're already dead. Don't talk like you have a life to lose."

"Look, I gave you that needle, or at least the second one since you thought the first was poison, as a thank-you gift. You're researching me. You're trying to figure me out. I would imagine you'd want something like my blood, so I decided I would do something to help you out in return for helping me out. I'm a ghost. I'm dead. But I do have a life, and I can lose it. If you don't think I have any life in me, check the blood. If you can't find anything in it, then tell me what would happen to me if I really did d-...um...stop working?"

Seven waited for an answer, but Maddie had none to give. All she knew was that seven _could_ stop working, but nothing beyond. "I'll...have to do a few more observations..."

She looked surprised and disbelieving for several seconds. "Are you kidding me? You would seriously put me in more comas? I mean, I'm just a boy, I-"

"Girl," Maddie quickly corrected.

Seven paused, sat up, looked at her as though she'd said the unthinkable. "I'm sorry, what?"

"I've found out one of your little mysteries, seven. You're female," she proudly answered.

The ghost scoffed and ran a hand through her hair. "Are y- You... _Maybe_ I'm a little more in touch with my feminine side, if that's what you're getting at, but do I seriously look that girly to you?!"

She eyed her for a minute. "A little, now that you mention it."

Seven gawked. "I'm a _guy_! Boy, man, male, macho, dude!"

"And how can I trust you? You're a ghost."

"So? Ghosts can be truthful too, you know. This one time, I..." Seven trailed off and didn't continue the sentence.

"You what?" Deep down she knew _he_ was being honest. After all, why would anyone...or any_thing_...lie about their gender, or take offense to it if it was guessed correctly? Seven didn't seem to be the type to lie. In fact, he had never actually lied before; he had been secretive, avoiding her questions concerning parts of him that he obviously didn't want her to know about, but he had never lied. She couldn't help but wonder if it had anything to do with her job, with the fact that she hunted ghosts. It led her to believe he might be trying to protect something, or even some_one_, such as a ghostly family member. He'd told her before that he had friends; maybe he was protecting them.

Seven floated off the bed and lowered himself onto the floor in a standing position, looking her straight in the eyes with the most serious face she had ever seen on him.

"You know," he said evenly, "it's hard to gain acceptance when everyone's turned against you." He looked to the side. "They all think you need to be destroyed simply because of what others have told them. They never bother to get to know you. They always accept what they believe to be the truth, even if it's all a lie. Sometimes people never try to find out anything beyond what they know. They never try because they don't want to doubt themselves."

She frowned; he was proving an amazing point that no ghost should be able to think about. Clearly he had thought this through, and he sounded so honest, so sincere in his words. But he was a ghost. Nothing more, everything less.

He continued, almost seeming as if he was unable to look directly at her. "Sometimes you have people really close to you that you know won't accept you for who you are. And it hurts, but you know they wouldn't care. You might have two halves to you, two different sides. In fact, those halves could easily be polar opposites. But sometimes people will only accept one half of you, because you're forced to hide the other. So no one ever gets to see the whole you, and you realize after awhile that they never will and probably never can.

"The hardest part is knowing that you can never be accepted, even by those closest to you, for who you really are. Nobody ever stops to think that no matter what, you're still you. No, instead they continue to yell and shout, complain and rant...and you find yourself being shunned by most people, treated like some sort of fatal disease, a cancer on the world and a disgrace to society. You then realize that you're an outcast, and it'll probably stay that way forever.

"But something inside you is so desperate for someone to finally come in and say, 'I don't mind,' that you start dropping these little hints for them to follow. They'll shoot at you and hunt you down, disgusted with the half they hate. But what about the other half? What will happen to the good half if everyone only sees the bad half? I'll tell you; the bad half will be dominant, and everybody will ignore the fact there _is_ a different side to you, that there's more to you than meets the eye. So the good half will be rejected if someone were to find out about its ties to the bad half.

"And the sad thing is, the bad half isn't always bad. People just see it that way because no one wants to believe they're wrong."

He looked back at her, awaiting a response of any kind, be it vocal or gestural.

She crossed her arms, but not in an annoyed or frustrated manner. It was more of a meditative body language.

"So you're saying you have two halves, a good and a bad?" she asked, partially a statement.

He smirked and flew up into the air. "There's more to me than you know."

"I know." She nodded. "And I can't understand why you act so comfortable here and willing to talk about everything except anything concerning yourself."

He crossed his legs, put his arms behind his head, and leaned back as though he was lounging in an invisible floating recliner.

"All you've ever done is try to shoot me down so you can rip me apart 'molecule by molecule'. Name one time you've ever given me a reason to trust you," he said, shrugging casually as though the answer was one even an idiot could figure out.

In his own way, he was right. Not once had she given him a reason to trust her, and not once had she given him time to explain himself. If he were allowed to explain something for once, it might've appeared to him as a trustworthy act. However, that wasn't the case, and now she was paying for each mistake she had made. He did say something about having two halves, and one of them was the only one he showed because he knew his "good half" would be ignored and rejected by all to whom it was presented. Maybe he had already shown his good half to her, but she had ignored it and probably even rejected it.

She sighed. "I'll admit that I haven't given you any reason whatsoever to trust me, but I need you for my research."

"Because I'm a ghost. And you hate ghosts. You're only using me to invent something that can destroy me later on," he replied. He paused for a moment before adding, "You won't accept my other half, and I'll die because of it."

"You can't d-"

"Actually, you haven't even accepted this half, so you really haven't accepted any of me," he interrupted.

"That's not entirely tr-"

"I've shown you my good half before, plenty of times; enough for you to know that I'm not evil at all. I've been trying my level best to protect Amity Park at all costs, laying my life on the line every day so you and everyone else can be safe. I've been kidnapped, controlled, attacked, and on the brink of death. Despite all that, I continue to protect this place knowing full well how many people and ghosts want to hunt and kill me. I've never asked for anything in return, and you should know that by now."

She couldn't argue with him. While it was doubtful that he had ever been controlled or on the brink of death, considering ghosts were already dead, he _had_ been kidnapped and attacked. He also never asked for any payment of some sort. In fact, seven never lingered around after he was seen. He showed up to fight and vanished the instant it was over. Occasionally he could be seen flying over Amity during the day as if to get somewhere fast. Then he would land, run out of view, and be gone before anyone had a chance to see where he went. There were times at night that he would cautiously fly around, this time seeming to look for something. If she asked him what it was...

"Seven, I've seen glimpses of you flying above the city at night. Unlike the rare occasions I see you during the day, when you're not fighting another of your kind, you fly slowly and if I didn't know any better, I would say you're oftentimes looking for something."

"Patrolling," he curtly replied. "You'll be surprised how many ghosts come out at night when no one knows they're there. And it's not just ghosts; I also look for things like fires, burglaries, drunks, anyone with a gun on them... On duller nights I usually help a cat out of a tree. Mrs. Munlay's cat loves that old birch she has in her front yard. The little guy's always getting stuck in it."

"And you don't get tired of it?" Then again, why would he? He was a ghost and obviously he had a food supply somewhere, otherwise he wouldn't be seen but two hours tops before disappearing forever.

"Of course I do. Geez, I come home just about every night way past my curfew! Getting in a world of trouble just for protecting the city, that's my life for you."

So...he got tired. He had a curfew. He got in trouble. But...but he was a ghost, why...? It didn't make any sense. Did he have a family? Did his family know he was out patrolling the city? Were they against his job? Or did he create these little rules for himself? Was it self-discipline that made him get in trouble? Did he punish himself for staying out past curfew? Why would he even need a curfew? He slept, sure, but when there wasn't a threat around he had all the free time in the world and could use that for a nap.

"Where exactly do you go during the day then?" she asked. "Unless there's a ghost, no one ever sees you out in broad daylight."

He bit his lip and looked up, like he was thinking of something...

"No excuses!" she barked.

His reaction was quick. "Sorry M- Uh...Maddie." Wait...what was he about to say before he corrected himself and said her name? She knew that if she asked him, he would only run her in a circle and move her gently onto a different topic. "I um... I just go places. Anywhere, really, as long as it gets me away from the public."

He did it again. He didn't lie to her, that much she knew. He went somewhere, and found the loophole in telling her.

"Okay..." she groaned, hoping he would pick up on her exasperation. "You said you had a home; where would that be?"

He opened his mouth for a second, but shut it again. She was getting into his personal bubble and he didn't like it. She was making him too uncomfortable and when she needed his trust so badly, trying to pick his brain wasn't the best idea at this time.

"I... I don't feel very comfortable talking about that..." he murmured.

She didn't imagine he would be.

"Is there anything you _can_ tell me about yourself that isn't so vague?"

He grinned and his eyes gleamed with mischief. "I'm a ghost."

She held back a full smile but felt the strong tugging sensation on the corners of her mouth. There was an evident smile playing on her lips, but she refused to let it grow to the size it wanted to.

"Very well, I supposed that's a start," she said as flatly as she could.

He laughed. "A start of what? Are we going to form an unbreakable friendship during my stay?"

She sneered at him and his sarcasm. "Push your luck and you could end up in another wonderful coma."

His eyes widened. "What?! No! My stomach was killing me on day three, don't make me go through that again! Oh, and the fourth day...! I felt like I was going to shut down at any second!"

Hm... This was the first time she had ever heard seven explaining how he felt during the tests she had run, not counting as a test the six days he was "hospitalized". A perplexing ghost, this one...

"Okay, okay!" he panicked. "Umm, ummmmm, let's make a deal! I-I'll... Well...uh, what do you want, exactly?"

She would never put him in a coma again, not after she saw what happened to him because of her carelessness. But a deal, huh? This ghost was capable of proposing deals, of bargaining? Perhaps going so far as to say negotiating... Impressive, in a certain, nonscientific way.

"I want to figure you out," she answered plainly.

Looking thoughtful for a brief moment, he said, "Alright. Okay, yeah, I can do that. How about this? I'll help you if you help me. I've already answered questions for you _and_ given you my own blood, so now you have to do something for me. I'll have to figure out what, but for now, it rests at that. Deal?"

She didn't know why he was pushing the idea of a deal like that so hard, but...surely he couldn't think she was _that_ cruel, so much that she would put him in another coma. It didn't sound like he was pulling another juvenile drama act.

"Oh!" he shouted abruptly, startling her. He snapped his fingers. "I know what I want now! You have to call me by my name from now on."

She put her hands up. "To do that would be to refer to you as a human being, which you are clearly not."

He mumbled something incomprehensible out of irritation, but seemed to reach a conclusion quickly enough. "Well maybe I want to be referred to as a human being, 'which I am clearly not'."

"I won't do that, _seven_," she responded, putting extra emphasis on "seven" so she could get her point across.

He shrugged. "That's fine. A dying shame that you won't have anymore questions answered, though..."

She could only look at him as he smiled proudly with the knowledge that he had her cornered. Checkmate.

She let out a breath and threw her arms up. "Fine, but you have to answer my questions very specifically, without getting off topic or jumping through any loopholes, which you seem to be very good and finding."

"You drive a hard bargain. I'll answer the best I can but keep in mind, I'm only a pathetic little ghost. Some things are..." He paused and looked at the floor with...sad eyes? He was sad? About what? "Let's just say some things are better left unsaid. So when I tell you I feel uncomfortable about a question, or that I can't tell you something, don't push it. It might be too personal, you know? Even ghosts have a sense of boundary."

How in the world did he find a loophole in answering very specific questions?! He would be a handful, even more so now that she was starting to get more cooperation out of him.

"No, I'm afraid I can't do th-"

"Questions..." he prompted.

... For awhile there was deep, intense silence.

"Fine..." she growled at last. "But answer as many as you can _to the fullest extent_."

Smirking, he responded, "Very well, ask away."

Oh, where to begin... Being a ghost, he likely wouldn't know about his own anatomy, being as he had never looked inside his body before. There also wasn't a diagram in which to show him what he looked like. Even if there was, he wouldn't know what was what.

"You always show up wherever another ghost is. How do you know it's there?" she began.

He opened his mouth and pointed inside it. "Ghost sense."

"Ghost sense?"

He nodded. "A cold breath of air; it lets me know a ghost is nearby. And no, I can't control it." He snickered. "I wish I could though. It's so inconvenient when you're trying to work and all of a sud-" He cut himself off and refused to go on. She assumed it was one of the more personal things he wouldn't answer. "That's all."

"I said you have to answer them to the fullest extent. That means absolutely everything about it," she pressed.

His knee twitched in agitation. "Look, we've been doing this interrogation thing all of two minutes. You think you could ask something more basic before getting into the deep stuff like that? Besides, what I was about to say had a very minor tie to my ghost sense, so it's not important and it won't help your research at all, trust me." He smiled for a second. "Hey, yeah! The second thing I want you to do: trust me. You have to trust what I tell you."

"What?! How can I?! You're a ghost!"

"Ah-ah-ah, questions. Oh, yes, questions galore..."

She didn't really have a choice... He was taking full advantage of this whole deal he had suggested...and that she had agreed to. "Fine..."

"Good, glad we got that settled." He smirked. "Now, anything else or are we done for now?"

"Anything else," she grunted. "How long have you been in Amity?"

He seem to get a little fidgety, but answered anyway. "I've been here ever since I was born."

"Which was when?"

"I...uh... That's one of those personal ones. Next question please."

Sighing, she moved on. "Why do you take such offense to being called _just_ a ghost?"

He frowned. "Personal."

Another sigh. "How many personal questions can one ghost possibly have?!"

"Sorry, personal," he joked.

Whatever... It was hardly worth it, or at least it seemed that way, but digging into his psyche was important. He could really help her if she could get him to slip up, to reveal something about himself on accident. First, though, it looked like she would have to use up an entire week asking him the kind of things one would ask a very guarded person, which he was. In fact, he had to be the very epitome of guarded! Most humans couldn't set up a wall like he had! Wait...no, he wasn't a person; she had to stop thinking of him the way she was.

"Okay, okay," she finally gave. "Assuming you really are the good guy here, why would you feel the need to protect anyone?"

He shrugged. "Amity Park is my home. Nobody wants their home destroyed. It just so happens that people live in my home, and I'm fine with that. I protect them because it's almost like I'm one of them...almost like I'm a human..." He nostalgically whispered the very last part. He must've been talking about the days when he was still alive, the time before he died.

"How did you die?"

His head snapped to her in an instant. "How much more personal can you _get_?!"

"Fi-"

"But, if you must know, I died in an accident."

"An accident?"

He nodded very slowly. "I was the fool who caused my own death. I...I did something I knew I wasn't supposed to, and suddenly I'm in just...I-I can't even _begin_ to describe how much pain I was in! I passed out from nerve overload or something...and then, BAM, I'm dead. But yeah, it's just like you keep telling me, I'm never going to live the way I used to again."

If he was a real person she would be feeling bad for him right now. Even at this moment her heart a slight pang in it, like a tiny portion of it went out to him. It did sound like a very violent and painful death. And it had to be a slow one for him to have felt that much pain and remember it as if it happened just yesterday. She knew that if she was in a position such as the one he had just described, she would've been traumatized for life, and if she died like he had, she would've been traumatized for the rest of her afterlife...however long that truly lasted. There were numerous debates on whether it actually ended or not.

Seven seemed even more human now than he ever did before, despite having just told her how he died. He had experienced pain, from what it sounded like, beyond that of most humans, or possibly any human. It sounded so horrible, and to know he caused his own death, to know he caused himself to be in such a terrible and agonizing accident... It left her speechless. Normally she didn't care if a ghost got hurt but...

Phantom...


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

She sighed as she turned over in her bed. Seven...no...Phantom... It was almost like he had been humanized, as much she hated to admit it. Another thing very strange about him was that he remembered how he died. He remembered what it felt like to die. He remembered waking up after the accident as a spirit having no true purpose anymore. So he made a place for himself, and named himself so as to be uniquely identified.

She could only imagine how he felt as he looked down at his lifeless human body. If she were in such a position, she would be scared. She wouldn't know what to do now that there were grieving family members and friends. She wouldn't have wanted to cause them all that sorrow and regret, if they ever fought with her.

Phantom had had a very painful accident, a hard time dealing with his death, and now he was rejected by the people who used to live alongside him. Maybe his own friends and family had rejected his new form as a ghost... Maybe they didn't believe it was actually him... If that was the case, then he had been forced to run away, probably into hiding, and reappear as Danny Phantom. And it was possible that the underlying reason he chose to protect Amity Park could be so he could prove to his close ones that he was still himself, despite the change in appearance.

She closed her eyes and remembered what he said to her.

_"The hardest part is knowing that you can never be accepted, even by those closest to you, for who you really are. Nobody ever stops to think that no matter what, you're still you."_

His words still swirled about in her head.

So people had rejected him. Even those closest to him...just like he said. He said he had two halves, a good and a bad. His ghost form was his bad half. So his good half must've been the half he tried to show his family and/or friends. But it was like he said...

_"But what about the other half? What will happen to the good half if everyone only sees the bad half? I'll tell you; the bad half will be dominant, and everybody will ignore the fact there_ is_ a different side to you, that there's more to you than meets the eye. So the good half will be rejected if someone were to find out about its ties to the bad half."_

And even what he said about his bad half...

_"And the sad thing is, the bad half isn't always bad."_

There was no doubt in her mind now. He had tried to show people both halves, all of him, but they ignored his good half and focused on their hatred for the bad one. Maybe that was why he took offense to being called _only_ a ghost and _just_ a lesser being. Maybe it was why he felt so uncomfortable with his past. Now that she knew what happened to him, it was no wonder why he didn't want to talk about it. He'd been through so much, and unfortunately remembered every last bit of it. He acted like nothing was wrong but she saw his faint expressions, the emotions in his eyes, and the occasional crack in his voice when his past was brought up. He didn't _want_ to remember. He _wanted_ to forget. Because he hated the pain. And he wanted to get rid of it.

...And all this time she had been bringing him back to relive each moment of what happened.

She resolved then that she wouldn't ask him about his past again, nor about matters concerning his family or home. Ghost or not, she didn't want him to go through all those memories again. After all, memories were all ghosts had. None but Phantom seemed to remember how they died, or any events leading up to their death.

Then again, none of them had Phantom's solid form. Come to think of it, how did he have a solid form? His matrix was completely unstable! He should've fallen apart even before he was made! But...he didn't. Somehow he maintained the density of a human. Something unnatural had obviously happened when he was created.

Mental fingers in her head snapped. Of course!

_"But, if you must know, I died in an accident."_

_"An accident?"_

_He nodded very slowly. "I was the fool who caused my own death."_

That accident had to be the error in his creation! At the moment he had said "accident", she was assuming a car accident since that was the most common cause of accidental death in the U.S. She had been wrong. He killed himself. It was, in reality, an accidental _suicide._ And what he said afterward...

_"I...I did something I knew I wasn't supposed to, and suddenly I'm in just...I-I can't even_ begin_ to describe how much pain I was in! I passed out from nerve overload or something...and then, BAM, I'm dead."_

Curiosity. That was it... That was it! In the most literal of all terms, curiosity was what killed Phantom. Meaning that he really was the cause of his own death, and his curiosity pushed him into whatever accident he had...which ultimately caused the malady in his creation. That accident, possibly coupled with the emotions that stemmed from his pain and the pain itself, had forced Phantom's dead spirit to take on a form. Why it was so unlike the other ghosts' she still didn't know, but even with all those negative emotions held during the accident, something else had to have happened. It had to be the accident itself that was the underlying cause of his abnormalities.

Mulling over every word of the conversation yesterday, she thoroughly checked each and every sentence for some clue, some hint as to what exactly that accident was. But he had chosen his words carefully; she couldn't find anything. Could she go up to him and ask him directly? The better question was, _should_ she? He would only make her chase her tail for awhile before bringing up something he was more comfortable with. He didn't trust her with his memories. Admittedly, she never gave him any reason to do so.

Trust... That was the key to unlocking Phantom. For some reason his spirit ran on trust, on that particular emotion. It was important to him; she assumed it was because of his "halves" and what happened when he tried to prove he was still the boy was before he died. If it was her, she would become overly wary as well.

But he was too guarded right now. He wouldn't let his little walls down unless she let hers down first. She sighed; this would take some time. She still didn't fully trust him despite his background. He was a different ghost, but a ghost nonetheless. She didn't feel comfortable with letting anything slip, but she knew that if she didn't trust him, he wouldn't trust her. It went two ways with him...unfortunately...

Her alarm clock began screeching, signaling not the morning, but Phantom's midnight feeding.

Sluggishly, she slid out of bed and went downstairs to heat leftovers. But she stopped as a thought hit her. He was a ghost but he acted like a teenager. Teenage boys loved to eat just food, but they also loved to eat real food; the kind of food a mother would make for her family.

She shoved several chicken wings into the microwave and waited for them to heat. It was stupid to waste electricity by heating up food for a ghost that would only freeze it as soon as it went in his mouth, but it almost seemed to her as if Phantom deserved a little kindness in his afterlife. She still didn't fully trust him on anything, but if he was truly protecting the city and as he claimed, "laying his life on the line" without anything in return, then why not let him have a small thank-you? After all, whether he was marking his territory or not, he saved the lives of the living and chased other ghosts out. Heated leftovers would hurt anyone.

After combining the chicken wings with a mixture of vegetables that consisted of carrots and broccoli, she took the dish down to the lab, where Phantom had yet to wake up. She knew better than to expect a full night's sleep out of him. He would be waking up in a short bit with a snarling stomach.

And to prove her point, his stomach growled. Ah, the sound of a rumbling tummy... She had never heard it come from a ghost before. Well, until she caught this weird ghost. She had been so shocked back then but now it was a consistent noise. It was like an alarm clock, going off every two hours.

He flipped over onto his back and placed a lazy arm over his eyes, probably in the typical teenage attempt to block out the light coming from upstairs. To prove another point, he groaned and let his head lean to one side.

"Sev- I mean..." She cleared her throat, not used to saying his name. "_...Phantom..._time to eat."

"Turn off the lights..." he grumbled.

His stomach angrily grumbled back.

"Yes, I'm sure you don't want anything to eat. Get up and get your food," she said.

He slid his arm off his head but kept his eyes closed. "Don't wanna..."

"Your stomach says otherwise; now get off that floor."

"Mmmmm... 'Kay...just a second..." he sighed.

Maddie decided to give him "a second", but ended up waiting two full minutes before becoming impatient.

"I said get up!" she shouted, her own temper rising as her brain began registering how badly she wanted to sleep right now.

He yawned and slowly lifted himself off the floor. When he stood up after a good thirty seconds, he wiped his eyes and stretched, yawning again before setting bleary eyes on the chicken wings.

He really was like a teenage boy; like a zombie when he was woken up.

She slid the food through a slot in the door and he took it, looking like he was ready to simply drop it and go back to sleep.

His stomach growled again, though, and he forced his eyes to stay open while he began nibbling on a wing.

She went back upstairs, knowing that his plate would be void of any food come morning.

She did manage to get to sleep after while, but her dreams were tumultuous. Every last one of them was a horrible nightmare about Phantom's life. In one of them he was just a little boy, probably around five or six years of age, and was surrounded by friends any family.

_Everyone loved that little boy; he was nothing more than a little goofball. Then he aged in a flash as the scene of a small boy frolicking in the park changed to an older boy in his preteens. He was more mature than before, but he was still a goofy kid at heart. His friends and family had gathered around him on his birthday and he was smiling the biggest smile as he prepared to blow out his thirteen candles. _

_The scene changed to complete blackness; in that blackness, a heartbreaking scream was heard. The darkness cleared up to reveal a boy around fourteen years old buried and crushed beneath large pieces of cement and two steel girders. One of his arms could be shown sticking out from the mess; the skin on it was split and bloody, and the bone underneath was broken so that the middle of the forearm hung limply at an unnatural angle. It looked like he had three joints..._

_The boy could faintly be heard gasping his last breaths._

_Phantom slowly detached from his human body and floated gently above himself. He opened his eyes and immediately looked at his disfigured arm. Shock washed over him and for the longest of times he could only stare. Eventually he began to panic and he looked down at his ghost self to find a completely different appearance. He scanned over himself quickly, screaming as the reality of what happened finally hit him._

_He immediately began shoving thick pieces of concrete aside until his dead body was uncovered. At this point Maddie could've thrown up. Even on the pieces of concrete Phantom had moved, blood had been leaking everywhere. There were puncture wounds ranging from large to enormous all over his human body._

_Phantom shook in fear as he realized he was dead. Nevertheless, he shook his horribly marred body by its shoulders and shouting to it in a desperate attempt to revive himself. Needless to say, it didn't work. He shook his body more vigorously._

_"Wake up! Wake up! Come on, wake up! Don't...DON'T DIE!" he frantically yelled to his limp, lifeless body. "Y-You're me, please! You have to wake up! I can't be dead! You can't be dead! DANNY! OPEN YOUR EYES AND BREATHE! Please, Danny! I-I can't...I-I can't... I'M NOT DEAD! WAKE UP!"_

_Tears began to stream heavily down Phantom's desperate face as he let go of his body and began ramming himself into it and pressing up against it with as much force as he could muster._

_It took her awhile to figure out that he was trying to get back into his body, but was only succeeding in getting his own blood all over himself. This could easily have been how Phantom died; it was possible that her recent contact with him had triggered some sort of memory that was being shown to her. He must've been curious about a construction, or possibly even a demolition, site and ignored the warnings to not go in. He must've gone in anyway and stepped on something he wasn't supposed to, causing the collapse of tons of concrete and the two steel girders. He had been unable to get away and had been crushed. The thing was, he was still alive even after that, being as he was still breathing. In about ten seconds that breathing had stopped to be replaced with Phantom. This would explain why Phantom remembered the sheer agony of his death; he was still alive when it happened._

_The scene changed again, but this time it didn't change to a year later or even a few days later. It was probably only an hour or two later._

_The siren of an ambulance was drawing near and the flashing lights could be seen off a distance on the road in the far background, past the site. Two adults, one male and one female, were the grieving over the horrifying sight of their baby boy lying dead on the pile of concrete._

_Phantom peeked out from over the pile; apparently he had at some point gotten behind it, perhaps from fear of what had actually happened to him._

_"Mom! Dad!" he called out excitedly, leaping over the pile and his body, to greet them._

_So those were his parents... She was already assuming that was who they were but she had been hoping otherwise._

_He grinned his first grin since dying and ran up to them, clearly expecting to be comforted and told it was going to be okay, that he was fine, that they loved him._

_That didn't happen, though. Instead they looked up as he was coming towards them and glared furiously at him. The pair stood up and did nothing to make him feel better about his death._

_He ran up to his mother and hugged her tightly, new tears coming to replace the old ones. The woman jumped and pushed him away from her, grainy blotches of his blood sticking to her shirt._

_The poor boy frowned. "What's wrong, Mom?" He then looked down at himself, as if suddenly remembering what he had become. "Oh. I-I know... I mean...it's kind of shocking to me, too, but I can't get back in my body. I-I've tried, I really did; a-and I've tried to get myself to wake up but...but I... Mom, I died... I'm sorry, I knew I shouldn't have gone in there; you told me not to! I'm sorry, Mom, I should've listened." He turned to his father and continued, "Dad? Are you okay?" He turned back to his mother. "Mom?"_

_Neither of them answered and the boy took a step back, still frowning. "Guys?"_

_Again, no response. _

_He let out a short, forced laugh. "I-I'm sorry... I am. I didn't want to die... I swear, I did everything I could!"_

_The man snarled at him while the woman continued to glare._

_"Guys..." Phantom croaked. "T-This isn't funny..."_

_His mother looked away. His father's face remained unchanged._

_More tears rimmed this poor boy's eyes. _

_"I'm still Danny..." he choked out._

_"YOU ARE NOT OUR SON!" they screeched in unison. _

_He flinched at their words. "No...! I-I really am Danny!"_

_"No you aren't! Our son is a kindhearted young man who..." The woman trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. "You aren't him. You're just a ghost!"_

_Phantom flinched again and hung his head, gravity pulling the fresh tears out and onto the pavement surrounding the site. "I got curious, I went in there and all that stuff fell on me... I don't want to be a ghost, Mom. I'm not just a ghost...I-I'm your son, bu-"_

_"YOU ARE NOT MY SON!" his father screamed. "You're nothing more than a glob of ectoplasm that shouldn't even exist!"_

_The boy's breath faltered and he slowly shook his head. "No I'm not... I'm a person..."_

_"YOU WILL NEVER BE A PERSON!" How a mother could say that to her son, Maddie would never know._

Maddie immediately woke up, sweating and nearly crying. Phantom wanted to be a person; he wanted to be their son again. He didn't want to be call _just_ a ghost because that was what his father had told him. And her? She had said the exact same things his parents had. She had told him that he shouldn't exist just like they had. She told him he could never be compared to a person. She told him he was too low to be considered any good.

He had always been different, had always been unique...and she put him down for that even though he couldn't help it.

No...NO. He was still a ghost! _Just_ a ghost. Just one more ghost in this world. Just one more thing to study. Just one more non-person to realize that he wasn't a person and had never truly been one.

He was just one more shaped blob of ectoplasm.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

She sighed as she finished mixing the last batch of chemicals. Phantom was supposed to drink this. He said he would help her, and now it was time for him to help her. If she was right, this would be a kind of sedative, but for ghosts. Phantom was never hyper unless overfed, but she was hoping that the calmer he was, the more trusting he would be. The more trusting he was, the more relaxed he would be about telling his secrets to her. He wouldn't tense up at the memories of his past; he probably wouldn't even be bothered by them. All that concrete, all that pain, all that trauma...would mean practically nothing to him. It was a perfect way of getting him to cooperate while at the same time testing out her new serum.

"Okay, Phantom," she said, holding up a large tray of small glasses, each filled with shot glasses full of serum. She had yet to name it; she wanted to know if it worked before naming it. "I want you to drink as many of these as you can. It should help you feel better and relaxed, if I'm right."

He shrugged. "You did call me by my name... And I did promise to help you if you did that..."

Almost reluctantly, he took one of the glasses and sipped on it, taste testing it first. He seemed to find it to his liking and finished off the rest of the glass. This time he didn't hesitate to take another.

She quickly wrote down notes about this. A serum that tasted good to ghosts would probably taste terrible to humans. Did it taste good to other ghosts? Could the other ghosts even taste? Phantom could; and he judged her new mixture to be yummy. Was it perhaps a sensation to a ghost? Was it a true sense of taste or was it a result of the chemicals reacting with the ghosts' ectoplasm? Er...namely, Phantom's ectoplasm. He was the first to try this out.

She just hoped nothing major happened to him. It was highly unlikely, almost impossible actually, that anything would happen aside from the sedative properties. Most of what was in that liquid contained specially altered chemicals consistently found in ectoplasm. It shouldn't have any harm or even risk of harm on Phantom.

"Hey...um..." Phantom began, holding up an empty glass. "Um...is there any more of this stuff...?"

He looked more relaxed, which meant her plan was working. Her serum had worked! And...and he had wiped out the entire batch in two minutes... Maybe this stuff was a little _too_ tasty...

Nevertheless, she handed him another tray, full of what she would think up a name for later. Depending on just how much it took for Phantom to start sighing, smiling, and talking softly through half-lidded eyes, the name would have to wait. Once he had become that calm, she would take the drinks away whether he wanted her to or not and begin asking him questions. First she would start off with the major things simply so she could get that out of the way, but in order to fully understand Phantom, minor questions would also have to be answered. After the major questions, she would move on to the minor ones.

"There any more? Really good stuff, right here. I don't...really know what it tastes like...but...it's good," he murmured, holding out his empty glass.

She looked at the tray. Astonishingly, it was full of empty glasses. Some of the glasses were on the floor, yet none of it had gone to waste. Shocking? Yes. But it was a good sign. He was already beginning to talk more lightheartedly and not a single muscle in him was tense anymore. Usually he had some sort of tension, some sort of readiness to defend himself; now he didn't have that.

She gave him three trays and he immediately began diminishing the liquid on the first tray. Astounding... Did Phantom's behaviors throughout the day have anything to do with what he consumed? It seemed likely, seeing as how he was pounding down one glass after another. They were only shot glasses, though, so it would make sense that they would go fast. Or could this happen to be like a form of catnip to him? He was literally all over this stuff; he had also made it clear that he liked the taste of it.

She heard him quietly snicker to himself. "Quietly" was the key word there. For once in her life something actually worked on Pha-

He burst out in a brief laughing fit.

That...wasn't supposed to happen... Maybe he really was becoming more relaxed, but showing it in the form of laughter. Yes. Yes, that had to be it.

Another brief laughing fit, this one louder than the last.

Or maybe it wasn't it...

Why was Phantom acting like this? He shouldn't be acting like this, he should be acting like he just drank a gallon of green tea while burning incense in a spa. By now he should be so calm he would be ready to sleep any second. What was going on with him?

"Hey!" he shouted over to her, waving another empty glass high in the air. There was still one tray he hadn't yet demolished. "D'you know what this stuff's called? I like it!" He gave curt laugh before hastily going for another glass.

Something told her he should lay off her concoction for a while. He was getting a little...well..._tipsy_.

She rushed into the unit and tried to grab the tray away from him, but he merely grinned and flew up higher than she could reach, tray in hand. He was treating this like some kind of game. Didn't he know something was a _tad_ off about him?

In under a minute, that whole tray was gone and he set it none-too-gently on the floor, each glass cleaned out with not a drop left in them.

"Y'got any more a' that stuff?" he slurred.

"Phantom, are you feeling okay?" she asked. "Your speech is a little off."

He laughed again and waved a hand in dismissal. "Oh, dun worry lil' lady, I'm fine!"

Oh no... Perfect, she had managed to create ghost _vodka_ and now her test subject was drunk because of it!

Sighing, she told him, "Phantom, I made the wrong mixture. I think you're drunk."

"HELL YEAH I AM!" he laughed out boisterously.

"Phantom, you watch your language!" she scolded him.

He locked his fingers together and put his hands on his head. "D'awww, but I'm just havin' a lil' fun! You gotta chill out some..."

"I _can_ 'chill out'," she retorted, "But I accidentally created ghost alcohol and you've obviously ingested too much of it."

He stuck his tongue out very childishly. "I REGRET NOTHING!"

Inhaling, she said, probably more to herself than him, "I'll need to make something to counteract the effects..."

"But I ain't stayin' still for no test! I got too much a' that shit in my classes already!" he spat.

Maddie couldn't help but look at him as he stood there trying to maintain balance. He had classes? How? And he took tests? Why? On second thought, maybe letting him stay drunk for a little while wasn't such a bad idea. She was getting information out of him and she didn't even have to ask!

"So these 'classes', where are they?" she asked.

He stumbled forward a bit. "D'ummm... I just... I dunno... Hey, d'you know where my car is? I know I parked it in here somewhere..."

"Why would you need a car? You're a ghost; you can simply fly around everywhere." Plus, he had to be around fourteen years old; at the time of his death, anyway.

He shook his head. "I'm not a ghost! I have a Snickers bar..."

What? A Snickers bar? Where did that even come from? Unless... Clearly the chemicals were interfering and possibly rerouting his mental processes. His mind now lacked judgement, reason, logic, and anything else he had before the mixture was introduced to his body. As for the Snickers bar, it could be that he was experiencing hallucinations. If he was, that would mean that the "ectohol" contained hallucinogenic properties. And here he had consumed it...

"Phantom, try to snap out of it," she said. "You're _drunk_."

He smiled proudly from ear to ear. "No I ain't! I'm totally SMASHED!"

Like there was a difference. "Work with me; you said you would help me if I helped you."

"I'm not sleepin' with you!" he cried.

Oh, that was wrong on so many levels...

She put two fingers on her forehead and watched him attempt to fly. He failed and when he landed, his legs crossed and caused him to fall down. He continued giggling, his head lolling from side to side.

"Or is it stoned? Am I stoned? Was that a drug? Did you give me drugs? Can I have more?" he babbled as he sloppily stood up.

"I think you've had enough," she mumbled. A thought instantly struck her. "Phantom!"

He smiled. "_Yeeeessssss_, milady? Wut can ah do ya for?"

"I want you to tell me-" While he was hammered and wouldn't remember any of this later on... "-exactly how you died."

He frowned and for a moment she thought there was no hope. But to her favor she was wrong.

"I'm dead? How'd I get dead?" he asked.

She shrugged, pretending to be asking a very casual question. "I don't know; how _did_ you die?"

"Oooohhhhh, you must be talkin' 'bout the demolition watchamahoozit!"

"The what?" She heard "demolition". Her dream had "demolition". He could've died from "demolition".

"In rudderspect it prob'ly wasn't a good idea to mess with that...d'um...I-I think it was a...thing? I dunno... I messed around with sum'm and fucked up the whole thinger."

"Language, Phantom!" she reprimanded.

He looked up as his eyebrows furrowed, as though he was thinking of something despite his hazy mind. "I...uh...what'd I do exactly...? Oh! Yeaaahhhhh, I dun really know what happened, but sum'm started to crack apart. I tried to get away...but...uhhhhhh...what'd it do again...?" He smiled. "What was I sayin' now?"

Rolling her eyes, she reminded him, "Something started to crack?"

"Crack? Is that what I'm on?"

The urge to slap herself was already becoming unbearable. "No! The building, Phantom, the building!"

His giddy smile turned into a frown as he began thinking again, clearly trying to recall the incident. "Oh yeah! The buildin'! Um, I ran real fast but the damn thing gave way and felled on me before I could get out. Dammit you wanna talk 'bout pain! I could feel bones breakin'!"

The image of his bloody, broken arm being the only visible part of him in the cement pile slowly pushed itself into her head. He _felt_ that. And when Phantom hauled all those large cement pieces off his body only to find it beaten and disfigured with every single bone in it broken... He _felt_ his entire body being destroyed... Then, remembering the horrible scream from her dream...

"Did you scream?"

He let a smile play on his lips. "Hell yeah I did! It's hard not to when you gotz like ten tons a' cement comin' down on ya followed by two steel girders! Might a' survived if those things hadn't come crashin' down on top a' all that cement."

"And your body?"

"Look't worse than the kind a' bloody roadkill with the guts spilled out n' stuff," he replied with a shrug, apparently not taking any offense whatsoever to the questions.

"And your parents?"

"Telled me I didn't let their son rest in peace."

So _that_ was what happened after the end of her dream... That must've been the reason his parents were so angry at him when they first saw him. For some reason they thought that Phantom was a spirit that prevented their son's soul from moving on. It amazed her though, it really did. Phantom had tried to tell them that he _was_ their son, that he _was_ still Danny. But his parents rejected his new and permanent form as a ghost...just like he said about the "good half". He had been speaking that entire time from that one personal experience.

But there had to be more to her dream. Hopefully the same interaction she was having with Phantom now would induce the rest of that memory to manifest as a dream. Right now the ghost was too drunk to be of much use with the more intricate details, but at least now she had been able to tap into his past and find out more about him. If she could somehow manage to keep dreaming about his memories, it was all too possible that she could find out exactly how he was made. So far all she knew was that he had taken on a form when he separated from his dead body. That form should've been temporary, being as there was no way for him to maintain that form for an extended period of time, let alone gain his current density. Something else happened to him. His death in the demolition site was merely the beginning of his creation.

And the very thought of his death at the demolition site was enough to bring tears to her eyes; not for Phantom, but for the young boy who lost his chance at a life filled with the adventures that would always come with being a teenager. The boy had been very curious, and that fact was proven when he gave in to the temptation to explore the site. But that curiosity could have led him to great things, such as paragliding or rock-climbing. All those thrills were lost at the tender age of fourteen. And with that loss came horrible agony, with death nipping at his heels before devouring him.

But even for Phantom, upon seeing how terrified he was at his death and how heartbroken he was at his family's rejection; her heart constricted.

NO! NO! NO! Phantom was just a ghost! That boy, Phantom's old body, was human and deserved to be felt for, but Phantom himself didn't and never would deserve an emotion in his favor. She needed to focus on her tests and results, not on his life.

_The scene changed to complete blackness; in that blackness, a heartbreaking scream was heard. The darkness cleared up to reveal a boy around fourteen years old buried and crushed beneath large pieces of cement and two steel girders._

No.

_The boy could faintly be heard gasping his last breaths._

No!

_Phantom slowly detached from his human body and floated gently above himself._

NO.

_He had been unable to get away and had been crushed. The thing was, he was still alive even after that, being as he was still breathing. In about ten seconds that breathing had stopped to be replaced with Phantom. This would explain why Phantom remembered the sheer agony of his death; he was still alive when it happened._

NO!

_"Mom! Dad!" he called out excitedly, leaping over the pile and his body, to greet them._

Stop.

_He grinned his first grin since dying and ran up to them, clearly expecting to be comforted and told it was going to be okay, that he was fine, that they loved him._

Stop!

_He ran up to his mother and hugged her tightly, new tears coming to replace the old ones. The woman jumped and pushed him away from her, grainy blotches of his blood sticking to her shirt._

STOP! PLEASE STOP!

_"What's wrong, Mom?" He then looked down at himself, as if suddenly remembering what he had become. "Oh. I-I know... I mean...it's kind of shocking to me, too, but I can't get back in my body. I-I've tried, I really did; a-and I've tried to get myself to wake up but...but I... Mom, I died... I'm sorry, I knew I shouldn't have gone in there; you told me not to! I'm sorry, Mom, I should've listened."_

NO MORE...

_"I-I'm sorry... I am. I didn't want to die... I swear, I did everything I could!"_

This wasn't truly Phantom.

_"I'm still Danny..." he choked out._

He couldn't "still be Danny". He was a ghost now, and nothing more!_  
_

_"No you aren't! Our son is a kindhearted young man who..." The woman trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. "You aren't him. You're just a ghost!"_

The woman was right; he _was_ just a ghost.

_Phantom flinched again and hung his head, gravity pulling the fresh tears out and onto the pavement surrounding the site. "I got curious, I went in there and all that stuff fell on me... I don't want to be a ghost, Mom. I'm not just a ghost...I-I'm your son, bu-"_

His mother was rejecting him even though he was begging her not to.

_"YOU ARE NOT MY SON!" his father screamed. "You're nothing more than a glob of ectoplasm that shouldn't even exist!"_

He _was_ a glob of ectoplasm that shouldn't exist.

_The boy's breath faltered and he slowly shook his head. "No I'm not... I'm a person..."_

There was no way she would cry over a ghost. His afterlife had been miserable for that moment, but-

_"YOU WILL NEVER BE A PERSON!"_

Tears that were meant for the young man who lost his life now spilled over for the "glob of ectoplasm that shouldn't even exist".

Phantom had a life. He had told her so himself awhile back. He had told her that despite being dead, he had a life he could lose. This must've been what he was talking about. Those words had haunted him ever since they were said. Even so, he was determined to prove to his parents that he _was_ still their son, ghost or not. But from the way it sounded, Phantom would never be their son again. The young boy, Danny, would always hold a place in their heart despite being dead. But as a ghost he had, in a more complex way, revived himself in a different form. Now their son was right in front of them and they treated him like a horrible infection.

He had been expecting to be welcomed back into his own family. He thought they would be happy to see that he was okay; if being a ghost counted as so. He wanted them to tell him they still loved him.

But no. They did none of that. They hated him now. They genuinely hated him. He was their son for heaven's sake! Or...at least, he used to be their son. Nevertheless, why would they treat him so horribly right after he _died_? Obviously that was a hard experience. He never wanted to be crushed under concrete and steel girders. He didn't want to be alive to feel that. All he did want was the acceptance of his family. Even now, that was probably all he wanted.

But he needed to understand, and come to terms with, that he would never be accepted by them again. Deep down he had to know that. Somewhere inside him, he had to be screaming at himself for holding onto that thread of hope that didn't exist.

"D'awwww," Phantom hummed. "Why're ya feelin' so sad?"

Without her consent, or even a warning as to what he was doing, he wrapped his arms around her. Even drunk, this "glob of ectoplasm" was trying to comfort her even though he was the one who really needed comforting.

Without thinking, she embraced him back. It could've been the density, but he felt like a child. He felt like a lost, hurting child who just wanted to be loved by his family again. If he could make a Christmas wish list, the only thing on it would be, "Mom and Dad". And it broke her heart.

"It's okay, Phantom..." she whispered, her voice strained and her throat tight.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

He laughed. "_Whaaaaat?_ You're sad over the okay a' sum'm'?"

She gently rubbed his back, unable to produce any words as she looked down at the once-living boy and cried harder. He didn't deserve any of this. He had lost _everything_ in one cruel blow. Now there was just nothing left to give and he knew that. This was the real reason he was so comfortable in his unit. He had nothing left to give, but tried to do what he could nonetheless. He was willing to help in return for the name "Phantom". That was it. That was all he wanted her to do for him. And it killed her. To call him by a number even though she should've seen the signs of masked pain when he was called _just_ a ghost now killed her on the inside. Yesterday it would've done nothing to her.

She would make it up to him somehow. She couldn't provide him with his mother and father, granted, but she could fix up his unit to be a little more like a teenage boy's room. She could buy a bed and a desk and one of those comfortable swivel chairs that her own son loved so much. For entertainment she could get him books and board games, and of course no one was too old for bubble wrap. She herself still liked it. She could get him some Leggos and a bookshelf to put everything he built on. She could also get him some colored pencils and a drawing pad. He could display his masterpieces on the bookshelf if he wanted to.

Phantom pulled away. "Well somebody's lookin' awfully serious! _Sum'm's_ on _someone's_ mind!" The last sentence rang in a singsong voice.

She couldn't bring herself to answer him; if she said anything wrong right now she would have a complete breakdown. She had treated Phantom badly enough and he deserved so much better. He wasn't just a ghost...he was a person.

He turned around and squinted. "Hey, d'you know where Cujo's at? He should be here right 'bout now."

With those words, Phantom pursed his lips. At first she couldn't tell what he was doing, but when he yelled out, "HERE BOY!" she knew he was calling the ghost dog that seemed to come back once a week. The chamber was soundproof and as long as the intercom was deactivated, no one would hear him. But right now, even if it was deactivated, she would still hear him, being as she was actually _in_ the unit.

She took a deep breath and wiped away her tears as she watched him stare pointlessly at his reflection in the glass.

"Hey," he slurred. "Where ya been?"

He spread his arms and pressed himself up against the glass, "hugging" his reflection.

"Phantom?" she called softly, mindful to keep her voice low just in case what she said came out the wrong way.

He either ignored her or didn't hear her and kept talking to the Phantom in the glass.

"Hey! Come look at this!" he shouted to her. "This guy's awesome! He knows how to do what I do!"

The ectohol _had_ to be strong if he didn't understand what a reflection was. If a human became this drunk, serious hazards would be posed; however, Phantom was kept in an empty unit at all times and therefore had no dangers threatening him. It was a relief to her conscience to know that at least one thing she had done for him was beneficial. Although to be fair it was only beneficial because it helped counter another wrong she had committed against him.

She walked up to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

Then, never thinking she would say this to a ghost, she said, "I'm sorry."

Still smiling, he looked at her. "What for?"

"Everything," she sighed. "I kept telling you that you were lower than low could get but I was wrong. I didn't know it hurt you that badly. I didn't even think you could feel emotions. In fact, I convinced myself even before I caught you that ghosts were just mindless _things_ that had attachments to this world, but not an actual purpose. And if you ever want to tell me what keeps you from moving on, I'll be ready to listen."

She already knew. In a strange fashion, Phantom had unresolved business with his parents _before_ he died. Thus, he was forced to continue an isolated and definitely different life in the world of the living, his spirit unable to be at rest because his ties would never be...cut... She suddenly realized it. Phantom could never move on without the acceptance of his parents, which would obviously never happen. But the acceptance of his family had been denied only after they had seen him as a ghost. It was something entirely different that kept him here in this world. What was it? Something else happened to him before he died, otherwise he would never have come back as a ghost. The question was, what? Her dream only showed the pleasant events before he died and the few events when and after he died. It was too vague; she needed to know more.

"Dun worry," he laughed. "You didn't do anythin' wrong."

He was too drunk at the moment, but now that he wasn't a blob of ectoplasm, she knew he had the sense of right and wrong. He knew she had done wrong. Honestly, it wasn't likely that he would ever believe her apologies to be true. He would never trust her, thinking she wasn't sincere and was only going to use him just like she had been doing this whole time.

She still wanted to use him. She still wanted to study him. But this time...so she could help him.

It was very common to see him injured during a fight. To see him crash into solid concrete was a twice-a-week ordeal, to see him crack asphalt, windows, or cars happened about twice a week, and to see him shatter brick wall after brick wall took up the remaining three days. Every day it was the same routine: he fought a ghost, the ghost wounded him, and he finished the fight weakened and drained. Well, depending on the ghost. The harder ones were a big deal for Phantom. Take for instance, the Wisconsin ghost. It wasn't rare to see the two wrapped up in a fight with one another. The Wisconsin ghost seemed to be able to overpower Phantom in mere seconds. Phantom knew he was outmatched but always managed to gain the upper hand.

He had trouble with it though. The Wisconsin ghost was a powerful one. For Phantom to fight against him meant severe injuries. Their battles could last for hours on end with not a single period of calm in between. Phantom was always left weak and exhausted when it was finally over. Most of the harm, in fact, seemed to be on his part; though occasionally he would deal intense blows to the Wisconsin ghost as well. How he always managed to draw ties with the elder ghost, though, was unknown.

After all, it really shouldn't be that way. Phantom fought off every other ghost by literally beating them down before sucking them into a stolen Fenton Thermos. But his fights with the Wisconsin ghost had always interested her. Nearing the end of their fights, the dialogue between them escalated. Instead of being beaten down or sucked into the Fenton Thermos, the Wisconsin ghost actually seemed to _retreat_ of his own will. This could only mean that Phantom had said something to end the fight. How or why the fights even started was a mystery.

Of course! The battles with the Wisconsin ghost were always intense and the outcome for Phantom was never good. If she could find a way to increase his power, those said battles would be made so much more easier for him. It would require more research on Phantom though... Would he allow her to increase the physical amount of her research? That would mean plenty of surgeries and several biopsies. In fact...the only way she could truly take off on her expansion would be to start with a vivisection. She had never performed such a procedure on Phantom before.

The whole point of it was to find a way to enhance his strength, so her intentions were in his best interest. The problem was, he might not see it that way; or worse, he might not trust her enough to let her do it. It was all too possible that he could think she was, as he would say, trying to "kill" him. That wouldn't have been true before, but now it would never be _considered_ true. If she thought even the slightest problem was starting to form during the operation, she would stop.

One of the potential problems was actually the temperature of the room itself. She had never tested how a ghost's insides would react to an outside temperature. Phantom's insides were by far the most intriguing. To have been able to show up in an X-ray, just like a human's, was nothing less than incredible. It was the only way she had known about his anatomy. The biopsy she had performed near his ribcage showed no organs being as the ribs were surrounded by the external oblique.

Sighing, she realized that simply because of morals that should never be held toward something so low as a ghost, she would need Phantom's permission to go through with the vivisection.

"Phantom," she said softly.

He slowly dragged his attention from his reflection and let it wander to her. "Hurmmmmm?"

She took a sharp inhalation. "I would like your permission to perform..."

She couldn't finish the sentence.

"Perform...? You mean like a theater? Are we seein' the movies? I haven't seen a movie in so long...! Can we watch a movie?"

She let him continue to ramble on about movies while her thoughts drifted elsewhere. She had already taken advantage enough of him. The likelihood of him being able to recall this incident was slim to none, so she was in a very wide safe zone concerning that matter. But she just couldn't do anything else to him. It would be wrong to ask him about the procedure while he was incapable of making those kinds of decisions.

And at that thought, yet another question was added to his endless list; but this one was more of morality and less of anatomy: how would she tell him that she knew all about how he died and the particular events in the wake of the aftermath? Something told her he wouldn't be happy about that kind of knowledge, but at the same time she knew how horrible she would feel if she chose to keep it a secret. She already felt horrible about taking advantage of him when he was like this.

When he came out of it, what would happen? Obviously he would be more reasonable but how would _he_ feel about being told such news?

Wait, wait, WAIT! What...? Why was she...? She shouldn't be thinking of Phant-... Seven. He was to be called seven, not Phantom. She would only call him Phantom so he would help her. She would perform the vivisection, permission or not. A moment of weakness, that was all that happened. It wouldn't happen again. A scientist of her rank, exhibiting human emotions toward...toward...a-a _ghost!_ Her own husband would laugh if he were ever find out about this.

And honestly...she should be laughing at Ph-...seven right now. Why wasn't she? Here this _ghost_ was, stumbling around and acting like an idiot with no common sense whatsoever. Yet she didn't find it funny in the least.

It was possible that she was becoming too attached to Pha-..._seven_. She needed to keep her distance, otherwise she would end up one of the countless suckers in Amity Park. Absolutely not, she wasn't going to be fooled by him. His whole life story was probably fake anyway.

...How could that be true, though? He was a ghost, and thus had spiritual properties that were unknown to the human realm. Of course. Of course! It was so obvious! Emotional contact was what allowed his ghastly energy to seep into her head and form a a dream. But because it was his energy that had been spread to her instead of her own conscience, that dream had been molded and shaped into one of his memories. So her suggestion about the interaction with seven being the trigger for the dream was correct. And the reason it had never happened before was because she had been so cold towards him. She never felt anything, never cared. This was why his memories had been incapable of reaching her.

Emotion really _was_ the key to unlocking him. Without it, she would never know his past and never gain his trust. All cooperation would be empty. If she felt positive emotions toward him, such as the sympathy she had been feeling earlier throughout that whole time, he would come to _want_ to help her and perhaps even tell her about his past. He might be able to explain an incident that caused him to become a quite permanent being. Perhaps that same incident, or even a different one, would be the very reason he was so humane.

So whether she wanted to or not, she had to feel for him. Her research would be halted until he chose to give her the information she needed. It had been made clear that she needed his trust and cooperation to complete her work. However, he would be guarded for a while to come. To tap into his own mind was a blessing.

"Nevermind..." she mumbled.

He smiled and laughed. "Nevermind? Never. Mind. You never. Had. A mind. So it's a never mind, nevermind!"

She rolled her eyes. She wanted to believe she didn't have the patience nor the will to put up with him right now, but that would be a lie; and lying to oneself was hard; sometimes even impossible.

He looked up at the thick hair that fell over his face and rubbed it in between his fingers like it was some kind of mysterious and unknown object sent from a prophet in space, suddenly mesmerized by it. He even went so far as to mouth the word, "Woah..."

There was nothing in his unit that he could hurt him, so she could relax that thought as she turned off the lights to go upstairs and sleep. Hopefully one of his memories would cross the gateway to her subconscience.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

She lay awake in bed for what had to be countless hours. If only there was some way to feign an emotion... But how? It seemed impossible! How would one fake sympathy? Sorrow? Compassion? Love?

Wait.

Love? No. No, no, no. She hated Phantom, not loved him. She already had two kids; two beautiful, living children whom she would give everything to protect. Phantom wasn't one of them. He wasn't even living! Well...he was at one point, but now was different...right? In a certain, confounding way he was alive. Even his organs... They were, in the same baffling way, alive. But how? How was that possible?

No! She silently chastised herself for trying to get back into her scientist mode. Yes, she was curious, but she needed to sleep. If she couldn't sleep, she would never get any insight into what exactly had happened to Phantom to make him the strange ghost he was now.

Sighing, she turned over to her side. If only someone else was here with her... Knowing her children were gone had made her, as a mother, quite edgy and definitely nervous. Phantom was _extremely_ distracting, thank goodness, but there were still times when she thought about her children's safety. Jack was overseas, but she knew he would be fine. Yes, he messed up frequently and normally did more harm than good, but he knew how to take care of himself and be safe.

NO! She had to stay focused. Getting to sleep was imperative if she ever wanted to find out more about Phantom's psyche. The secrets he had to be hiding were big, she just knew it. She got the feeling that he knew what happened to make him such a stable ghost of unreal power.

It had to be another hour and a half before she finally began to drift off. At first it was all bits and pieces of future research on Phantom, along with other ghosts, and the discoveries she would be able to show to the government. Of course, Phantom would still be her property should they want to take him into custody, which meant she had the choice to give him up or not. She honestly still didn't know what she would do with him once her research was complete.

But finally, the dream she was praying for came to her, which meant she had felt for Phantom whether she wanted to or not.

_"Wait! What did I do wrong?!" Phantom cried out to his parents as they walked away, his father holding his mother and trying to comfort her "I-I'm sorry! I shouldn't...! I...I shouldn't have...gone into..." He let his voice trail off, realizing that his parents weren't coming back no matter what he said._

_The ambulance still hadn't gotten there yet; he was alone. He was alone when he went into the demolition site, he was alone when he died, and now he was alone in his afterlife. He had nobody._

_Phantom looked to sky before settling his eyes back on the retreating forms of his parents._

_"What do I do now?" he choked out, clearly trying to make his voice louder but failing._

_She knew all the emotions that were flashing in his eyes. He was wondering what he should do, where he should go, and ultimately...how to survive. Getting lost in a demolition site was one thing but now he was lost in the world with no one there to help him. In other words, he was sentenced to suffer through this on his own...for the rest of eternity...  
_

_Amazingly, he didn't try to follow his parents. Instead, he climbed back onto the pile of concrete, looking at his exposed body as if he was expecting it to wake up any moment, start laughing at the joke it had pulled on him, and welcome him back into his body. Then his parents would be happy again and he would remain a member of the family. _

_Then he did something that she didn't see coming at all. _

_He lifted one hand and looked at it, almost seeming to glare at it. He brought his palm to a sharp protrusion on the edge of a concrete piece...and jerked it across. Ectoplasm flowed freely from his hand and he was immediately shocked by the color; but he quickly braved the thick, green liquid and used his newly injured hand to clutch his body's chest. Dark red soon mixed with green. It was a sickening sight to see two opposites enter the same body. Why Phantom was doing this was a completely mystery to her. _

_A thought struck her. Could it be that a major part in Phantom's true creation came from this very moment? Was it possible that his new ghost body, which at this time was still unstable, had actually accepted his human DNA as it combined with his ectoplasmic matrix? It would explain a lot about how he became like he was now. His human blood could've solidified him more than other ghosts', which perfectly explained his odd density. This would have to be due to the introduction of DNA into his newly formed body. Because this body was so fresh, the acceptance of DNA as it merged to his ectoplasm, possibly fusing to it, was causing an abnormality that in theory wasn't supposed to happen. Then again, she had never seen or even thought of anything like this before. _

_It was ultimately his death that explained most of him. He remembered his life because of the overwhelming pain he felt as he was being crushed. He was emotional because of the brutal rejection he had faced soon after seeing his own dead body. He had such a stable, permanent density because he had unknowingly transferred his own DNA, which was why his new body was able to accept it. _

_Traces of his DNA would probably be found in his ectoplasm... If only she had a sample...! _

_Wait... She did have a sample of his ectoplasm. She still had the needle he gave to her. Although it was unlikely to help any research, it would be interesting to have a look at Phantom's ectoplasm and blood mixture. Even a trained eye, looking at it from the outside, would see no blood due to the small amount he had in him. But under a microscope, crystalline strands of DNA and possibly entire cells should be found.  
_

_The newest unanswered question now was: how did Phantom even exist? Yes, his form had been solidified, but that still didn't explain or even hint at why his matrix didn't just fall apart. Every ounce of her research said he shouldn't have been able to hold any form longer than a few minutes. He should've fallen apart but...why didn't he? While the DNA would stabilize certain aspects that would cause this kind of density, it couldn't stabilize the core of it all, his matrix. And it couldn't be a gene from his DNA being as he was dead and couldn't use that gene anymore.  
_

_Great, just one more unanswered question added to the still-infinite list..._

_The entire scene changed, not allowing her to view the next actions he took after combining his ectoplasm with blood._

_It was vital to her research though; and to the invaluable insight into Phantom's deeper, more guarded memories. For this to enter her mind must mean he trusted her even more. Well, either that or the ectohol was still keeping an open door into his mind.  
_

_This was Phantom before he died; this was the boy who lost his life to a demolition accident. In fact...this was how it all began._

_A young man, definitely around her own son's age, with brown, thick, messy hair, pale skin, and other features that she couldn't quite make out in the darkness, was grinning deviously as he stalked toward the demolition site._

_She remembered from the last dream that his mother had told him not to go in there. He was being defiant now, not knowing what was to come of his disobedience. But she, knowing very well what this horrible outcome would be, wanted to scream at him to stay away from the site. However, being as this was a dream as well as one of his memories, she found herself unable to interrupt the scene about to unfold before her.  
_

_He slipped under the orange construction tape and began looking around. He was slow in his advances at first, clearly wary of his environment, but eventually became comfortable as he continued deeper into the site. He paid more attention and spared more glances to the machines than he did to anything else. All boys, it seemed, loved machinery. Even her son liked to look at trucks. _

_He turned in such a way that let him face the moon. She was able to make out a few more of his features. The most noticeable was his brown eyes. _

_He seemed to be unable to resist getting in one of the cranes. He was so excited he almost tripped getting in it. But he did, and she remembered Phantom saying something about messing with something. This crane must've been what he was talking about. _

_He gently ran his hand over a few switches before quietly laughing. Oh...if only he knew..._

_He reached for a lever but paused for a moment, trying to decide whether he should pull it or not. That lever had to have done something to the crane. Well...probably. Maybe. Anything could've happened here. For all she knew it was actually a different machine that did this. But...how would a machine play a part in this if they were all off and couldn't move? It had to be something else. Maybe he pulled on a girder or board that he thought was stable but wasn't. _

_He finally pushed the lever up and she held her breath. Nothing happened. He didn't seem disappointed or even expectant. So she was right after all; the machines here didn't do anything. He had messed around with something else to cause the collapse of the concrete. _

_He played around with a few of the switches and buttons before looking over to the side of what she assumed to be a crane's dashboard. She couldn't make out exactly what it was, but he seemed interested in it. It looked like something was jutting out of the dashboard and held some kind of...dangling...object..._

_Oh no. No! What was he doing?!_

_He turned the keys and smiled in excitement and thrill as the crane's engine started up. He held onto a stick and pretended to be moving it, creating his own background noises to help him imagine wrecking the buildi-_

_Wreck...! That wasn't just a crane, that was a wrecking ball! He had turned it on, he was holding onto the controls...! This wasn't going to end well! No, of course it wasn't! He died because he was too curious to let it be! He would die! Why didn't he get out of there?!_

_She wanted to scream at him to get out while he still had a chance but she just couldn't. This wasn't just a dream, this was Phantom's memory of how he died. It already happened, meaning there was nothing she could do to change it. But suddenly tapping into his memories didn't seem like a good idea anymore. She wanted out and she wanted out now! She had no desire to watch a young boy be crushed under tons of solid concrete. _

**_"In rudderspect it prob'ly wasn't a good idea to mess with that...d'um...I-I think it was a...thing?"_**

_He was messing with this crane right now. No more. She didn't want to see any more of this. How could she get out of here? Wasn't there supposed to be some kind of exit in a dream? Right? There had to be one._

_The boy tapped on a lever for a second before deciding to test his luck and pull it._

_He wasn't expecting the crane to jerk forward. The neck rammed a girder that was holding up what appeared to be a third story. And she didn't fail to notice that the girder had moved, causing dust to fall in a cloud around it. A tiny squeak was heard from the metal, but despite having moved, the concrete it held up put enough pressure on it to hold it still.  
_

_The boy immediately got out of the crane, forgetting to turn it off, and worriedly looked up at the spot he'd hit. Some of the concrete had cracked and chipped, and there was a dent in the girder, but everything was otherwise fine. _

_He seemed to realize this as well and his expression became one of relief. His muscles relaxed and he exhaled. _

_Something under the elevated concrete floor caught his eye and he walked over to inspect it. At first he was wary, looking it over just to make sure it wasn't some kind of construction doohickey or demolition bomb. He did pick it up at last, though, to proudly reveal a twenty dollar bill. She saw him smirk in triumph. He began looking around to see if there was more near what he had found. Apparently he didn't notice the second small squeak; or maybe he was ignoring it.  
_

_He didn't stop searching for more money until he heard a low groan followed by the sound of something cracking. At this point he shot his head up and stared uncomfortably at the point where the girder connected to the concrete. It moved just slightly. He took a few steps back._

_She realized that this was it. The girder would cave in. The cement would crack, break apart, and crush him. And she would be forced to watch it all._

_The girder moved again, slowly caving in, just as she had predicted._

_He took a few more steps back but by now he didn't have a 100% chance of survival, of making it out before the whole thing fell on him. Of course, with his future already set in stone, he had no chance of survival whatsoever. _

_He was, sadly, directly under a wide cement roof; the cement loomed over him and the beam holding it up suddenly bent and literally caused an entire half of the cement to crack heavily._

_He seemed petrified, but managed to turn heel and run._

"**_Yeaaahhhhh, I dun really know what happened, but sum'm started to crack_**_ **apart."**_

_The second beam bent to the point where it almost snapped in half. The concrete was miraculously still holding up, but already beginning to come apart. The edges were the first to go, small chunks of it dropping off and landing with a loud THUMP on the dirt._

_One of the concrete pieces dropped right in front of him as he neared the edge. He turned around so fast that he tripped and fell. Thankfully that particular piece didn't hit him and he scrambled to go the other way. Unfortunately, with the whole thing starting to collapse, there was nowhere safe to run. By now there were smaller concrete pieces dropping off and landing in random places around him._

_He stopped just in time to avoid another piece. Instinctively, he turned around again and ran back in the opposite direction. That was his biggest mistake. When he turned around, he had twisted his foot. After about fifteen steps, the foot twisted the other way. His legs crossed and he fell face-down. _

_She wished she didn't have to see the next part..._

_Just as he spread his legs back out enough to climb back onto his feet, a larger, heavier piece broke off. It landed with a sickening snap. _

**"Oh yeah! The buildin'! Um, I ran real fast but the damn thing gave way and felled on me before I could get out. Dammit you wanna talk 'bout pain! I could feel bones breakin'!"**

_He let out a bloodcurdling scream and grabbed his hair in agony. He stopped what he was doing just long enough to look over his shoulder. Immediately, a look of pure horror washed over his face. His lower leg had been crushed beneath the cement piece. The horror quickly turned to panic as he realized that the rest of his body would end up like his leg if he didn't get away soon._

**_"I...I did something I knew I wasn't supposed to, and suddenly I'm in just...I-I can't even begin to describe how much pain I was in!"_**

_She could do nothing but watch as he desperately clawed at the ground. He knew he was trapped and he knew he would never be able to get away. He knew no one would be able to come in time to help him and even if they did, what could they do? The whole thing was coming down on him; there would be nothing to hold it up and even if there was, it would take too long to get it under the concrete. Unless the thing suddenly stopped, his fate was sealed.  
_

_She noticed something glistening in the moonlight and soon realized that he was crying. And who wouldn't be? Even in the dream, she could feel herself trying to get in there to try to lift the concrete piece just enough to free his leg._

_But then something even more cruel happened._

_As he clawed at the ground, moving himself in different directions in a futile attempt to free himself, another smaller piece of concrete dropped onto his outstretched hand. This time he was too frantic to scream or give any sign that he was in pain, even though she knew he was._

**_"Did you scream?"_**

**_ "It's hard not to when you gotz like ten tons a' cement comin' down on ya!"_**

_He tried to jerk his arm back several times but she was seeing this from an angle that let her see the skin start to rip. It made her want to throw up. He was now trapped under two pieces of cement; one of them was breaking his leg while the other was breaking his hand. He didn't give up and bucked as hard and fast as he could in a last-ditch effort to slip out of the concrete._

_He knew he was going to die._

_A much smaller piece of cement tumbled off and struck him on the back, causing him to stop squirming. At first she didn't know why, but it soon became clear that he'd had the wind knocked out of him. And not just that..._

_Looking closer, he began to cough. About four coughs in, red started to fleck the ground beside his head. Her best guess was that the piece had broken a rib, or perhaps several ribs, and that rib had punctured a lung. If that was the case then blood would've been flowing in. The only way to expel it would be to cough it out, but when a lung was punctured and no medical helped was provided, it was fatal. _

_She saw him close his eyes for the last time.  
_

**_"I passed out from nerve overload or something...and then, BAM, I'm dead."_**


End file.
